The Sundress Academy for the Arts hosts the several focused retreats a year that provide focused, personalized instruction to writers of all skill levels. Participants are treated to guidance from advanced instructors who help them to not only hone their craft but also find suitable venues for their work. These two-day events are run online or in-person, depending on the event.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is thrilled to announce its 2026 poetry retreat, which runs from June 20-21st. All SAFTA retreats focus on generative writing, and this year’s retreat will also include the following craft talk sessions: “When the Only Way Out Is Through: On Discomfort, Breaking, and Adaptation” as well as “Getting the Picture,” a workshop the seeks to hone the visual imagery of our writing by exploring the effect of this spectrum on both readers and writers, and by embodying visual images through personal somatic activities, social and scenic research, ekphrastic prompts, and more.
The total cost of attendance is $89 for both days. We will be offering five full fellowships to this year’s retreat, at least three of which will go to support emerging writers of color. To apply for a fellowship, please upload a packet of 6-8 pages of poetry along with a brief statement on why you would like to attend this workshop no later than April 15, 2026. Winners will be contacted in late April.
Space at this workshop is limited, so reserve your place today!
Getting the Picture with Matthew E. Henry
It’s time to be honest: for some of us, life has included shamelessly skimming long, detailed descriptions in stories to get to the plot, rolling our eyes in frustration when presented with writing prompts asking us to picture something, and never (fully) understanding what our English teachers and college professors meant when they repeatedly admonished us to “show, don’t tell.” Why? Because visual imagery hits differently for those who don’t primarily (or ever) think in pictures. The immense power of visual imagery can be lost when not fully appreciating that our creative thoughts are on a spectrum between conceptualizers and visualizers, which impacts both how we mine memories and activate our imaginations. This workshop seeks to hone the visual imagery of our writing by exploring the effect of this spectrum on both readers and writers, and by embodying visual images through personal somatic activities, social and scenic research, ekphrastic prompts, and other ways of bringing visualization into our writing from the outside.
When the Only Way Out Is Through: On Discomfort, Breaking, and Adaptation with Julia Bouwsma
“…the best way out is always through.”
And I agree to that, or in so far
As that I can see no other way out but through…
― Robert Frost
This workshop seeks to meet our present moment on the page by considering and honoring the difficult.
What happens to us—as readers, as writers—when we are forced to dwell in prolonged discomfort? How do we nurture and sustain poetic imagination even as we bend under the daily weight of so much water carrying, so much wood chopping? And what happens to the poem when this effort is no longer sustainable, when the bottom falls out and the poem’s formal container ruptures or distorts beneath the emotional weight of all it is holding?
Beginning our investigation first as readers, we will consider a variety of “difficult” poems: poems that cause “good trouble;” that force us to sit in grief or fear or disgust; that test our endurance; that hold us at arm’s length; that spectacularly transform or fracture under adversity.
Then, through a series of exploratory prompts, we will consider what it means to embrace difficulty as writers—what it means to attempt to write the poem we don’t yet know how to write, to struggle, to adapt as needed, and to come away changed by the process.
Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is an educator, essayist, fiction-dabbler, and the author of seven poetry collections, including the forthcoming Promises to Keep (Wayfarer Books, 2026). He’s editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and nonfiction editor at Porcupine Literary. MEH’s publications include Barren Magazine, Had, Massachusetts Review, Mom Egg Review, The Pedestal Review, Ploughshares, Stone Circle Review, Terrain, Whale Road Review, The Worcester Review,and Zone 3. MEH earned an MFA, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. He writes about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground at www.MEHPoeting.com.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is thrilled to announce its Trans/Nonbinary Writers Retreat, which runs from Saturday, July 18th, 2026, through Sunday July 19th, 2026. This event will be entirely virtual held via Zoom. All SAFTA retreats focus on generative writing, and this year’s retreat will also include the following craft talk sessions: “The Volta As A Survival Strategy” and “Ekphrastic Identities: Exploring Gender and the Body Through Art.”
The event will be open to trans and nonbinary writers of all backgrounds and experience levels and provide an opportunity to work with many talented authors and poets from around the country, including workshop leaders Dr. Kelsey L. Smoot and Kay E. Bancroft.
The total cost of attendance is $89 for both days. We will be offering five full fellowships to this year’s retreat, at least three of which will go to support emerging writers of color. To apply for a fellowship, please upload a packet of 6-8 pages of poetry along with a brief statement on why you would like to attend this workshop no later than May 1, 2026. Winners will be contacted in late April.
Space at this workshop is limited, so reserve your place today!
The Volta As A Survival Strategy with Dr. Kelsey L. Smoot
This craft talk that reframes the poetic “turn” not just as a formal device, but as a lived practice—one that many trans and nonbinary writers already use instinctively to navigate safety, legibility, and self-knowledge on the page. This talk explores how the volta operates as a moment of interruption, recalibration, and refusal: the place where a poem or essay shifts direction in order to protect the writer, complicate the narrative, or make room for multiple truths to coexist. Rather than prioritizing resolution or coherence, the volta becomes a tool for resisting narrative violence and honoring the nonlinearity of trans and queer becoming.
The talk blends close reading, accessible craft language, and embodied examples to examine how turns can occur through line breaks, pronoun shifts, tonal pivots, temporal jumps, and moments of self-implication. Participants will be invited to think about how the volta functions as a survival strategy; how it allows writers to change their minds mid-sentence, refuse over-explanation, and write toward recognition rather than closure. The session emphasizes permission, flexibility, and care, offering writers practical ways to harness the power of the turn in their own work while affirming that contradiction, revision, and unfinishedness are not failures of craft, but vital forms of knowledge and self-preservation. The accompanying generative writing session will invite participants to practice multiple kinds of turns: emotional, temporal, and embodied, using the volta as a tool for exploration rather than resolution.
Ekphrastic Identities: Exploring Gender and the Body Through Art with Kay E. Bancroft
Visual art allows us to delve headfirst into a new universe upon first glance and closer inspection, sometimes allowing us to see the world around us (and ourselves) with new eyes. Through dialogue and short writing exercises, we will explore the ways that ekphrastic poetry can allow us to explore and break borders of gender and the body, and how it can provide us with a new lens through which to understand our identities.
Dr. Kelsey L. Smoot (he/they/Kelz) is a gender theorist, an elective Southerner, a writer, and a poet. His autoethnographic style has become the lens through which he understands and reflects on his experience navigating the US sociopolitical landscape. Currently, Kelz serves as an Assistant Managing Editor at Sundress Publications. They are the winner of the 2021 Sad Girls Club Spring Literary Contest, the 2023 The Good Life Review Honeybee Prize, and the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Button Poetry Video Contest. Kelz is a Tin House Workshop alum, a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, and a Best New Poets nominee. Proudly, he is also the author of two chapbooks: we was bois together with CLASH! (An Imprint of Mouthfeel Press) and Muse, with Another New Calligraphy. Thrillingly, Kelz’s debut full-length collection of poems, SOULMATE AS A VERB arrives in early 2026 with DOPAMINE/Semiotext(e)
Kay E. Bancroft (they/them) is a writer, editor, educator, and artist from Cincinnati, OH. They hold an MFA in Poetry from Randolph College, and a BA from the University of Cincinnati. Their debut poetry collection, Bloodroom, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in Summer 2026. You can find their writing in Poet Lore, Pleiades Journal, RHINO Poetry, Passengers Journal, The Rumpus, & more. Explore more at kayebancroftpoet.com