WGA Late Summer Retreat
Thursday, August 28th to Sunday, August 31st, 2025
Sanctum Retreat
Check-in: 4:00pm || Check-out: 2:00pm
11 Sanctum Way, Caroline, Alberta
Registration opens at 10:00 AM MT on Monday, May 5th, 2025
Cost for two-night Stay (Friday to Sunday)
$600 for WGA members (or two payments* of $300)
$700 for non-members (or two payments* of $350)
Cost for three-night Stay (Thursday to Sunday)
$750 for WGA members (or two payments* of $375)
$850 for non-members (or two payments* of $425)
Cost includes private room accommodation–double and queen rooms available upon request–meals, and quality programming throughout the weekend.
*When choosing the two payments option, the order for the first payment should be made at time of registration. The second payment can be made anytime up until August 14th.
Please join us late this summer as we return to the beautiful Sanctum Retreat Centre in Caroline for a weekend of craft development, creativity, and connection. We are so excited to announce two award-winning Authors in Residence: poet and essayist Jenna Butler and scientist and speculative fiction author Premee Mohamed!
Blue Pencil Sessions
Requests for Blue Pencil sessions (one-on-one consultations) with retreat facilitators are now open.
Important. Please read:
When you register for the retreat, you will receive a notification email which will include details on how to apply for a Blue Pencil session with either Jenna Butler or Premee Mohammed.
Due to the limited availability of Blue Pencil sessions, we are unable to guarantee that all requests for a Blue Pencil session will be able to be fulfilled; however, we will do our best to accommodate as many requests as possible. In the event that the requests for sessions exceed the available spots, Blue Pencil sessions will be allocated by a lottery draw in order to make things as fair as possible. Once sessions have been allocated, you will receive the details for your Blue Pencil session or be notified if there were insufficient spots to accommodate your application.
Cancellation Policy
Any cancellations made on or before July 28, 2025, will receive a full refund minus a $50 administration fee. Cancellations made between July 29 – August 14, 2025, will receive a 50% refund minus a $50 administration fee. Refund requests made after August 14, 2025, may be considered on a case by case basis and are not guaranteed.
Refund requests must be made in writing to the Writers’ Guild of Alberta.
About the Authors in Residence:
Dr. Jenna Butler (she/her) is an award-winning poet, essayist, and editor. She is the author of six collections of poetry and essays. Revery: A Year of Bees, essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award and a longlisted title for CBC Canada Reads. A retired professor of creative and environmental writing, Butler holds fellowships from the Yaddo Foundation (USA) and Studio Faire (France). She currently serves as the 2025 Writer in Residence at MacEwan University. Butler works on the land between a collaborative off-grid organic farm in northern Treaty 6 and the unceded traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples of Vancouver Island.
Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, Ignyte, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, British Fantasy, British Science Fiction, and Crawford awards. In 2024, she was the Edmonton Public Library writer-in-residence. Currently, she is an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod. She is the author of the ‘Beneath the Rising’ series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.