Press / read some of the praise the Retreat has received from the media
Since its first year in 2021, the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat has been in the news. Here are a few of our favorites.
Iowa Writers’ Roundtable
“Iowa Press convenes a panel of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative for a roundtable discussion of each person’s writings and the importance of local community voices and storytelling.”
Authors and journalists at the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat discuss the art of speaking truth to power
It’s a long drive from Iowa City to Lake Okoboji. Like most of my colleagues, I’ve never been to Northwest Iowa, and I was curious to visit this red and rural section of our former swing state. The scenery was serenely flat in all directions, punctuated by silos, windmills, telegraph poles, fenceposts, Trump signs and church spires. The cornfields were brown and barren in the September sun.
There are in fact a string of lakes in this region, collectively known as the Great Lakes of Iowa, formed by the Des Moines lobe ice sheet 13,500 years ago. The indigenous inhabitants were Dakota Sioux, and they are mainly memorialized by a monument to the “Spirit Lake Massacre of 1857” when Inkpaduta …
My Story of The Okoboji Writers’ Retreat
Growing up in Nebraska, I was always a little jealous of the families who vacationed every summer at Lake Okoboji. It seemed like something people of means and importance did—going to the same place each year because it was so fantastic and familiar, renewing connections made the year before.
I was certainly impressed by the stories I heard. And it was storytelling that took me to Lake Okoboji for the first time in my 59-year-old life for the Okoboji Writers’ and Songwriters’ Retreat.
An Imposter Infiltrates a Writer’s Retreat
Fifteen miles into my three-hour road trip to the Okoboji Writers and Songwriters Retreat, I turned my Subaru Forester around. Adjusting the rearview mirror, I had noticed a tiny hair sticking out of my right nostril. Or was it my left? Mirrors are confusing.
But not the image of my grooming kit sitting on the kitchen table, and not in my suitcase. Anticipating a new experience makes me nervous. I blame my mother for sending me to kindergarten at 4. Since then, any new playground seems overwhelming.
An Invitation to the Greatest Writers and Songwriters Retreat in the Universe!
Some of the very best writers and songwriters in the country have gathered for several years at Lake Okoboji every fall at the invitation of the Iowa legend Julie Gammack to the Okoboji Writers and Songwriters Retreat. This will be the fifth year of the retreat, and it will be held from September 28 through October 1.
Here are the speakers/panelists at this year’s event, and a link to register. It’s reasonably priced and well worth the money. Topics to be covered include Memoir, Comedy, Opinion, Creative Writing, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Journalism, Songwriting, Poetry, Storytelling, Documentary, Filmmaking, Editing, Playwriting, Photography, Children, Poetry, and Publishing.