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• RAGDALE WRITERS' RETREAT

  • Start
    October 20, 2025
  •  
    9:00 AM
  • End
    October 22, 2025
  •  
    5:00 PM
  • Location
    Ragdale - 1260 N. Green Bay Road, Lake Forest, IL
  • Spaces left
    0

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  AT CAPACITY: MORE RAGDALE RETREATS TO BE SCHEDULED -  WATCH YOUR INBOX!

  Note: Attendees: Please direct all questions and communication regarding registrations, overnight accommodations, special dietary restrictions or other concerns to  Tara Maher.

  • Learn more about Ragdale:
  • Learn more about author and Retreat Mentor Christina Clancy:  

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• DROP YOUR SHORTS: The Online Flash Festival

  • When
    October 28, 2025
  •  
    3:45 PM - 6:00 PM
  • Location
    REMOTE
  • Spaces left
    0

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  UPDATE: We quickly reached our submission limit, but we invite others to join the meeting and add their observations to the mix! We'll observe the 15-minute limit discussion per piece, so comments should be succinct.  We've also enabled a waitlist to submit, should any entrants bow out. 

  Join your OCWW colleagues writing short form for feedback and fun at our first flash forum. Submit your pages for a constructive, incisive critique by your peers and prepare to offer the same in this two-hour moderated session.  

  Eight members writing flash, essay and short story in multiple fiction and non-fiction genres are invited to share their works-in-progress. Come prepared to comment on key craft elements and receive similar input. No content restrictions, but all manuscripts should be intended for publication as stand-alone pieces, not a section of a longer work.  

  Considering meeting time constraints and the effort  required to critique all participating manuscripts, we made the group as large as we thought possible.

  Details:

  • Word limit: Up to 2,000; 8 pages; flash and micros 
  • Format: 12 pt type; double-spaced; author name and title in header; 
    pages numbered
  • Submission deadline: Friday 10/17
  • Maximum participants 8; each submission receives a 15-minute group analysis
  • Participants will be sent a link to all manuscripts for download, to be read and annotated for workshop discussion

  To participate:
  

  • Register to attend the remote event; you'll receive confirmation with zoom link and instructions
  • Email manuscript to lborovac@ocww.info  any time after registration until the deadline on October 17 - Subject line: Drop Your Shorts
  • Watch for a reminder email and zoom link - be sure to check spam
  • If your plans change the courtesy of a cancellation is requested

  About our facilitator:

  Janet Pocoroba  is a professor of creative writing at Lesley University and directs their MFA Program in Creative Writing. She is the author of The Fourth String: A Memoir of Sensei and Me (Stone Bridge Press, 2019). Her essays, memoirs and reviews have appeared in The Rumpus, Post Road, Harvard Review, The Writer, Kyoto Journal, and elsewhere. A new OCWW member, Janet lives a writer's dream life in a cabin in rural Vermont.  More info:  JanetPocorobba.com or Lesley Faculty Staff Directory.

  
  

  

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• Pump Up the Volume for OVERLAND

  • When
    November 11, 2025
  •  
    4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
  • Location
    1708 Wildberry, #E Glenview, IL 60025
  • Spaces left
    8

  Register

  Join Pump Up the Volume, the OCWW member book club for a discussion of OVERLAND, Caryn Green's adventure travel memoir.

  Tune in and turn on to a digitally-remastered blast from the past that recalls the dangers and delights of backpacking solo around the globe in the Informationless Age.  Set on the path thousands of truth seekers followed in the 60s and 70s in search of enlightenment, cheap thrills and free love, against a dazzling backdrop of geographic and cultural diversity, this rollicking yet reflective read is your escape to another time and place - where the ultimate measure of cool wasn't where you were from, but how far you'd come.
  
  

  • ORDER FROM AMAZON
  • ORDER FROM BOOKSHOP.ORG

  
  

  BIO:  Caryn Green is an award-winning essayist, author and  indie publisher whose legacy media career spanned decades. Her articles on topics ranging from travel, lifestyle, and the arts to history, religion and the environment have been published in numerous defunct and still-extant periodicals and websites. Overland: Remembering Southeast Asia, winner of the 2018 National Indie Excellence Award in New Adult Non-Fiction is her first book. Her next release, Better Angel is forthcoming from Manitou & Cedar Press.

  Green serves as OCWW's Director of Communications.

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