ITINERARY

Friday Sep 12th, 2025 –

Arrive early afternoon at Newark airport. The Institute will arrange the transfer from Newark to La Posada in Milford, Pa. The drive from the airport is about 1.5 hours. You will have time to check into your room, refresh, and grab a bite to eat before The Milford Readers & Writers Festival formally opens at the Milford Theater at 7pm. (Everything is walkable.) The festival’s opening night will be devoted to the oral storytelling/folklore of the Lenape, the indigenous Delaware Tribe of Nations, and the recently published On The Turtle’s Back. The Lenape will open the festival with a prayer for all in attendance and might possibly end with a dance, as the spirit moves them.

Saturday Sep. 13th, 2025

Institute attendees will have all-access passes for festival events. You will be able to hear panels and ask questions of the following talent:

Richard Behar
Jeff Arch
Andrea Trigiani
Matt Winkler

That night, Richard will host a private dinner for all institute attendees and some of his distinguished writer friends.

Sunday Sep. 14th, 2025

Sunday is mostly a day of rest and a chance to catch up on sleep and jet lag. However, throughout the village that day, there will be writing events that you can attend, as you see fit. The Sunday “salon” events will feature fiction, poetry, documentary writing, graphic novels, and illustrated books, among other subjects. Festival ends Sunday night.

Monday Sep 15th to Friday 19th, 2025

Institute attendees start their workshop retreat, a combination of one-on-one masterclasses and editorial discussions of their work with the workshop group as a whole. Breakfast will be served in the Fauchere’s Delmonico Room every morning as of 8am. (A three-block walk.) Editorial meetings, starting at 9.30am, will be in La Posada’s Presidential suite, which will serve as the Institute’s communal working space.

Every morning will start with a poem followed by in-depth discussions of two attendee’s writing. We break for lunch. Attendees can eat their lunch in the communal kitchen/dining room or eat locally in the village.

Afternoons are devoted to writing, exploring Milford, and private one-on-one editorial sessions with Richard. He will meet every afternoon with two participants, to privately discuss their work at length and in detail. Since the real work of writing takes place at home, the goal of these masterclasses is to identify manuscript strengths and weaknesses, and then jointly create a game plan to overcome those weaknesses when you are back at home, so the work gets kicked up to the next level. The group meets again at 6 pm in the Presidential suite for a drink before we collectively go to dinner, which will rotate between different village restaurants throughout the week. Some nights there will be a published writer of note or publishing executive who will join us for dinner and talk to you about the different ways to publishing success.

Late Friday 19th – check out & departure.

Session as above during the morning and afternoon. At day’s end, you will be transferred back to Newark airport to catch your flight home.

Following 12 months.

Three further zoom masterclasses with Richard, over the following year, milestones of execution for the game plan that was jointly agreed at the retreat.

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Costs: $4,380 per person all-inclusive of Newark airport transfers; all-access lit-festival passes; hotel room (all rooms are single occupancy) and half board (breakfast and dinner;) writing workshops; individual masterclasses; guest-writer discussions and lectures; and the three follow-on zoom masterclasses at mutually agreed on times during the subsequent 12 months. Retreat fee to be paid in two equal installments. The extras during the week are your flight to Newark; lunches; and any alcohol or incidental purchases.

Area residents who wish to participate in the Institute’s fall workshop can request pricing without the room-and-board and other travel-related costs bundled into the price.

For further information inquire via [email protected]