Notes from a Magical Week at Redbud’s International Writing Retreat in Portugal
Last October, Redbud went to Portugal for our first-ever international writing retreat—and we had the time of our lives. We won’t bury the lede: it was such a magical experience that we’re doing it again.
Join us for six unforgettable days of writing in the small town of Seia from October 4–10, 2026. Here’s a glimpse of what awaits:
We landed in Lisbon and gathered at our pickup spot, a mix of jet-lagged excitement and anticipation in the air. Some participants had already been exploring Portugal, while others flew in together from Raleigh, arriving as instant travel companions. From there, a shuttle carried us north toward Seia, rolling through golden hills and terracotta-roofed villages, with a stop along the way for flaky, custard-filled Portuguese pastries (the first of many memorable bites).
Benjamin Bradley, a Redbud alum, recently published his book What He Left Behind, a mystery novel set in Oak Hill, North Carolina. When a stranger is found murdered in a field, Detective Grace Bingham must reunite with Sawyer, an old flame who broke her heart and left town years prior. As the town turns against them, the two must work together to piece together enough evidence to convict the killer and evade the threats of the town’s powerful Dockery Family, who will stop at nothing to hide their secrets.
Our intern, Shelby Weisburg, a graduate student in NC State’s MFA Fiction Writing program, recently interviewed Pat Morris, about his experiences in Redbud’s year-long 2024 Novel Intensive class. Read on to learn how the course helped Pat gain the skills, accountability, and motivation to complete a full draft of his novel!
Our intern, Shelby Weisburg, a graduate student in NC State’s MFA Fiction Writing program, recently interviewed Devon Maguire, about her experiences in the year-long 2024 Novel Intensive class. Read on to learn how the course helped Devon to learn how to worldbuild, find a supportive community of writers, and finish a draft of her novel!
It’s the New Year, which usually means new writing goals—goals that are easy to set, but harder to follow through on. We know just how challenging it can be to find time and space to focus on your writing, so this year, we’re introducing a new class—just for parents! Check out this interview with our fabulous fiction instructor Diana Fenves as she discusses the new class, tips, and what she wished she’d known before becoming a parent…
All the resources, from all of the places, all at once
Are people still doing pun titles on Everything, Everywhere, All at Once? (Great movie, btw.) Well, despite our cultural dawdling, we promise that these are helpful resources for submitting your work, learning about craft, reading more widely, and meeting your writing goals. Whether you’re a beginning writer or more experienced one, there’s something for everyone! To the resources then!
What are some good articles on submitting my work?
We’re thrilled to announce that we are going to be dramatically increasing the number of free and community-based classes that we’ll be offering in the coming year.
Arshia and Emily rounded up our favorite books of 2021 (note: this list will not necessarily include books that were published in 2021, but books that we happened to read during the year).
This winter, we’re doing a series where we introduce you to our Redbud students! In this, our inaugural post in this series, meet Naomi East, who recently completed Ben Murphy’s Writing the Novel class.
This month, we’re doing a series where we introduce you to our Redbud students! In this, our inaugural post in this series, meet Casey Shapack, who’s taken Writing the Novel, a few Advanced Workshops, and, most recently, Writing Feminist Works.
Today we ventured out to the countryside of Chatham County to visit a bookstore that’s been around since 1989 but that we’d never before visited: McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village.
We’ve been remiss about our Bookstores of the Triangle adventures of late, what with all the excitement about teaching in person and the Coppice Prize and all that good stuff, but yesterday, we found time to visit a brand-new bookstore in Durham: Rofhiwa Book Cafe on Driver Street in Old East Durham.
We’re absolutely thrilled to announce the results of the first-ever annual Coppice Prize! We received 250 submissions, so it was quite the challenge to pick first twenty, then ten, and then finally three winners.
You might know the strip of shops and restaurants along 15 in Durham for bakery and beer garden Guglhupf and for gourmet food mainstay Foster’s Market. But if you don’t know it for bookstore Golden Fig—you should rectify that!
Nice Price Books & Records is one of those shops on Hillsborough Street that recalls a time when, we’ve heard, this artery was all punk coffeeshops and indie businesses, rather than…what it is now. Nice Price is a used record, CD, and bookshop located in the same block as Cup A Joe.
We love how this store is organized: books for little kids are located on the bottom shelves, while MG and YA books are located on the top shelves, so kids can age up from bottom shelves to top as they get taller.
So&So has recently moved across the street to a much more spacious storefront at 719 N. Person (in case you haven’t heard, your very own Redbud Writing Project will be operating out of the garden-level side of this building!).
