Writers Roundup
With Lesley Poling-Kempes and Robin McLean
August 16 - 22, 2026
A retreat/workshop for experienced, published writers who want to dig deeper into a book project, or explore and organize a new one, and to reconnect with the writing life while part of a community of writers at Ghost Ranch.
The purpose of this focused time in the inspiring landscape and light of Ghost Ranch will be to reinvigorate your writing. To wake generative processes that you might have lost touch with. To find new access points into your work via community with other writers, via the metaphors of Nature.
This week, you can explore new works you had not imagined, and leave the Ranch with new energy to continue. There will be two optional daily group workshops and one semi-mandatory session per day. Critique sessions with Robin and/or Lesley will be arranged throughout the week.
Participants will bring their own preferred work essentials – laptop, iPad, paper, notebooks, pencils, pens, etc. Most Ghost Ranch rooms have a desk and chair. There are also places and spaces to write around Ghost Ranch, including the library and shaded portals on various public buildings. Wi-Fi is available but spotty.
About the Leaders
Lesley Poling-Kempes
Lesley Poling-Kempes is the author of fiction and nonfiction books about the American Southwest including “Ghost Ranch,” “The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West,” and “Bone Horses”, a novel. Her most recent book, “Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women & Their Adventures in the American Southwest”, won the WILLA and the […]
Learn more about Lesley Poling-Kempes
Robin McLean
Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her first story collection Reptile House won the BOA Editions Fiction Prize and was noted as a best book of 2015 in Paris Review. Her debut novel Pity the Beast was noted as a best book […]
Learn more about Robin McLeanCategories : Ghost Ranch Program, Writing, Literature, Journaling