Writer's
Retreat

Zain Khalid’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, The Believer, Astra Magazine, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. His debut novel, BROTHER ALIVE (Grove Atlantic), is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book in any genre and was named a best book of 2022 by Library Journal and other outlets. He is a finalist for the 2023 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. He is also the fiction editor at The Drift.

He is represented by Kent D. Wolf of Neon Literary and Olivia Blaustein of Creative Artists Agency.

Tara Ison is the author of the novels A Child out of Alcatraz, The List, and Rockaway; the short story collection Ball; and the essay collection Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies. At the Hour Between Dog & Wolf, her new novel about a hidden child in World War II France, is forthcoming in January 2023.

A magical month. I felt I’d escaped to another time, to a peaceful medieval French village where all the stresses of regular, modern-day life (except internet and plumbing!) slipped away. The village was beautiful and inspiring, with tiny artisan shops, cobblestone streets, and stone fortification walls that allowed for breathtaking 360-degree views of the forested countryside. My hosts, Dorothy and David Alexander, are generous, delightful, book-and-arts-loving people – it was a joy to spend time with them. My home for the month was ideal: my workspace was a large farm table where I could set up all my papers, books, and computer in luxury, and a huge terrace brought the countryside into view. A gift of solitude. A focus on the writing, a full immersion into the words on the page or the visions in my head. A daily sense of wonder and gratitude. I will never forget this experience.  

My month in Puycelsi was one of the most memorable experiences of my writing life. Every day there, I wrote as long as I could, glad to have the freedom and space to immerse myself in my novel draft; I spent much of the rest of my time in the surrounding forest, climbing up and down the dramatic cliffs at least once every day. One week, there was so much fog surrounding the ramparts that I could barely see the countryside; other days I was treated to some of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen off the back patio of the retreat. After I quit for the night, I’d wander the village walls and look at the stars, sometimes not quite believing I was really there. It was in every way a truly magical time. Dorothy Alexander and her husband David were brilliant hosts, friendly and encouraging and generous, and I’m so grateful for the gift they’ve made to me and other writers with this residency. I hope that everyone who comes after me finds it as welcoming and inspirational as I did.

The Writers’ Retreat at L’ancienne Auberge was a transformative and valuable experience. I relished the solitude, which allowed for long uninterrupted stretches of writing, reading, and thinking, often to the point where I lost track of the days. Such deep freedom is a rare and precious gift. I loved getting to know Puycelci: its bookstore, walking trails, and wonderful people. I also enjoyed exploring the surrounding countryside: the farmers market in Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, Cafe au Bord du Monde in Salvagnac, Sainte-Cecile Cathedral in Albi, and much more besides. I am grateful for the chance to have gotten to know this marvelous corner of the world, and I hope I’ll get back sometime. Surely, there’s much more to see and do than I was able to cover in a month, but of course I spent a lot of time holed up in the gîte, at the big table with my books and papers spread out all around me, occasionally looking up at the vista beyond the balcony to check in on the progress of the day: thick blankets of fog in the morning yielding to gloriously sunny afternoons, the occasional raging thunderstorm at night. One day I saw a herd of sheep grazing the meadow on the mountainside across the way. Every time I looked up there they were, a little farther along than they’d been an hour before. It occurred to me, hearteningly, that in this way we were more or less the same.   

There’s nowhere else in the world quite like Puycelsi. The rolling hills, the glimpses of the Pyrenees, the low-hanging fog, the cobbled streets: all of it seeped into my imagination and for extended periods, I existed somewhere unbound by the rigors of time. There is no better place to write, to think, to read, and gape at the stunning landscape just beyond the terrace. I took long walks, went to market, explored the village, and filled pages with some of the best writing I’ve done in a while. This is a place you come to when you want to concentrate on the task at hand, when you want no distractions but those that your mind stumbles upon on its way towards an idea. It is magical, to put it simply, yet thoroughly centered on all that a writer needs: time and space and nature’s beauty. And in between, there are the people, the residents of Puycelsi – some of the best you’ll ever meet.

Oh, how soul-satisfying and productive this residency has been! I am struggling to say goodbye, but it’s no struggle to say thank you, thank you, thank you, to Residency Director Dorothée Alexander and her husband David. So much gratitude also to Danny Lewis, who is the gem of Puycelci, and to the head of the 2016 residency selection jury, author Prajwal Parajuly. I pinched myself each day I was here, to wake up from the dream, but these last few photographs assure me again that it was so, so real. Au Revoir!

Ross King and his wife Melanee ,  were the 2015 writers in residence. He is the bestselling author of books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. Among his books are Brunelleschi’s Dome (2000), Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (2002), The Judgment of Paris (Governor General’s Award, 2006), and Leonardo and The Last Supper (Governor General’s Award, 2012). He has also published two novels (Domino and Ex-Libris), a biography of Niccolò Machiavelli, and a collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s fables, jokes and riddles. He is the co-author with Anja Grebe of Florence: The Paintings & Frescoes, 1250-1743 (2015), the most comprehensive book ever undertaken on the art of Florence. Ross’s latest book, to be published in September 2016, marks his return to French Impressionism ten years after his award-winning The Judgement of Paris. The story of Monet’s struggles and triumphs in the last dozen years of his life, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies has been written with “a historical novelist’s attunement to the interplay of place, temperament, and society … Never before has the full drama and significance of Monet’s magnificent Water Lilies been conveyed with such knowledge and perception, empathy and wonder” (Donna Seaman, Booklist). Melanee King is the author of Tea, Coffee and Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine; Secrets in a Dead Fish: The Spying Game in the First World War; and Prophets, Seers and Visionaries, among other books.

I love the space. I love this town. I keep coming back to it for bursts of inspiration. I keep coming back for the people. I keep coming back to write. Puycelsi is special. L’Ancienne Auberge is special.

This is a picture from my last day in Puycelsi. I know because that was the day I turned my phone back on. For the entire month previous I had lived without it, telling time from the chimes of the clock tower, waking up in the morning with the first light. In this way I settled into one of the most productive writing routines of my life. I completed a long project which I’d been struggling with for years, began another, and filled a large notebook with miscellaneous thoughts and poetry inspired by my time in the Midi-Pyrénées. Funny thing, though, I don’t remember that time as a “writing retreat,” so much as a series of walks. These walks were so stitched into the routine I developed that I retrace them whenever I revisit the pages from those days, until it feels like the writing took place on the trails themselves. There were several paths out of the village, and each seemed to possess a personality of its own. I would choose which to take depending on the work at hand. If, along the way, I chose to explore a new trail, it often signaled an invitation to myself to think new thoughts and make fresh discoveries inside the world of my story. Once, an unfamiliar path I was on opened up onto a clearing where an old church stood beside a small cemetery in the middle of the forest. I feel now like I can point to the exact moment inside my play where I found that church.