2024 RETREAT INFORMATION
The second Witches & Warriors Retreat took place in August 2024 at Prindle Pond Conference Center in Charlton, MA. Aurielle Marie and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha served as faculty.
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Applications for the 2024 retreat are now closed, and decisions have been sent out via Submittable. If you applied and have not seen an email, please check your spam folders and/or log into your Submittable account. The application deadline for the 2024 Retreat was April 21, 2024.
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DATES
Friday, August 16 through Monday, August 19, 2024.
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LOCATION
Prindle Pond Conference Center, 19 Harrington Rd, Charlton, MA ​
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COST
There is no fee to attend the Witches & Warriors Retreat! Participants will be reimbursed for travel costs up to $150.
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HOW TO APPLY - CLOSED FOR 2024
Apply here! The application includes a 5-7 page work sample and three short answer questions (500 word max for each). Applications open on Monday, March 18 and will be accepted until Sunday, April 21 at 11:59pm EST. Questions? Read the FAQs here.
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2024 RETREAT FACULTY
AURIELLE MARIE
Aurielle Marie is a Black and Queer poet, essayist, and cultural strategist surviving state violence. They are the author of Gumbo Ya Ya and the winner of the 2020 Cave Canem poetry prize. She was a 2022 movement journalism fellow with Scalawag Magazine, a 2019 Lambda Literary Writer in Residence, and has received invitations to fellowships from Tin House, VONA, The Watering Hole, and Kopkind. Their work has been featured in American Poetry Review, the Poem-a-Day series, Teen Vogue, and The Guardian. A genderqueer filmmaker and storyteller, Aurielle writes about sex, systems, and The South from a Black Feminist lens.
Image description: Aurielle, a Black femme with long hair and dark eye makeup, looks at the viewer in front of a brick wall. They are wearing a lime green blazer over a black top with multiple gold necklaces.
LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a nonbinary femme disabled writer and disability and transformative justice movement worker of Burgher and Tamil Sri Lankan, Irish and Galician/Roma ascent. They are the author or co-editor of ten books, including The Future Is DIsabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs, Beyond Survival: Stories and Strategies from the Transformative Justice Movement (co-edited with Ejeris Dixon), Tonguebreaker, and Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. A Disability Futures Fellow, Lambda Award winner and longtime disabled BIPOC space maker, they are currently building Living Altars, a cultural space space by and for disabled QTBIPOC writers and creators.
Image description: Leah, a nonbinary Sri Lankan and white femme in their 40s with sand colored skin, grey smoke, chestnut brown and faded teal curls on one side of their head and a shaved side on the other, rose gold glasses and purple lips, looks at the viewer with their head resting on their left hand. They wear an apple green mesh top through which a neon yellow bra strap is visible.
QUESTIONS?
We've compiled some Frequently Asked Questions here. If you don't see the answer to your question, email ceci [at] brewandforge [dot] com.
SUPPORT THE RETREAT
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The 2024 retreat is made possible with support from the Markham-Nathan Fund, Resist, the Poetry Foundation, and many individual donors.
You can help us build a stronger and more creative movement by supporting BIPOC organizers, activists, and socially-engaged poets. Please consider donating below!
Brew & Forge is a fiscally sponsored project of the Peace Development Fund, a 501(c)3 public foundation. If you'd like your contribution to go specifically toward funding the retreat, please write "for Witches & Warriors" under "additional notes."