What’s Coming in 2027: New Retreats and New Authors

I keep looking at what we have planned for 2027 and thinking, how did this happen?

When Neil and I first started talking about Naxos Creative, the idea was really quite simple. We wanted to bring interesting people together in beautiful places, with brilliant writers, good food and enough time to actually talk to one another.

No rushing from one thing to the next. No enormous groups where nobody learns anyone’s name. And definitely no feeling that you have to be “on” all the time.

Somewhere along the way, that little idea grew.

Nola joined us, our retreat family grew, people came back for second and third retreats, friendships were made, books were written and read, and we discovered that some of the best moments weren’t necessarily the ones we had planned.

They were the conversations over dinner, the spontaneous swims, the glass of wine that turned into three hours of talking, or someone arriving on their own on Sunday and leaving on Friday with a whole new group of friends.

And now we’re looking ahead to 2027 — and I think it might be our most exciting year yet.

We start on Naxos…

Spring on Naxos is gorgeous. It’s warm, the island is green, the beaches are still quiet and there is that lovely feeling that summer is just beginning.

And we have some extraordinary writers coming.

M. L. Rio joins us in May for Writing in the Shadows. I am ridiculously excited about this one. If you have read If We Were Villains, you’ll understand why. Shakespeare, theatre, obsession, friendship and darkness — all on a Greek island. What could possibly go wrong?

We then have the wonderful Louise Minchin joining us for FEARLESS.

Louise has done so many different things in her life — journalist, broadcaster, author, endurance athlete — and has spent years talking to people who have pushed themselves beyond what they thought they could do.

I love the idea of having a week to explore some of those conversations without it becoming worthy or earnest. There will still be swimming, eating, laughing, reading and probably quite a lot of wine. This is Naxos Creative, after all.

Then we move into crime with Jill Dawson and Louise Doughty for Partners in Crime.

Two fabulous writers, a group of people who love books and several days to talk about stories, characters, crime and everything else that inevitably comes up around the dinner table.

Then we head for the mountains

One of the things I love about how Naxos Creative is developing is that we are beginning to discover completely different parts of Greece.

The mountains are very special.

They are quiet in a way that is quite difficult to describe until you are there. Pine forests, tiny villages, incredible food and none of the distractions of normal life.

So in June we return to the mountains for THE MANUSCRIPT.

And this retreat is deliberately simple.

You bring something you want to write.

That might be a novel you started three years ago and haven’t looked at since. It might be something almost finished. It might be the book you have been telling everyone you are going to write but somehow never quite begin.

There is no star author standing at the front telling you how to do it.

There is simply time.

Time to write. Time to think. Time to walk. Time to stare out of a window if that is what you need to do.

Sometimes I think that is the greatest luxury we can give anyone.

Pitch meeting with Jamie Hodder - Williams

And then autumn…

I LOVE Naxos in September and October.

The frantic heat of summer has gone, the sea is still warm and the island begins to breathe again.

Our writing retreats return, including How to Be a Happy and Successful Writer, with Sophie Hannah and a brilliant group of people from the writing and publishing world.

What I particularly love about this retreat is that it isn’t just about how to write a book. There are lots of places you can learn that.

It is about what it actually means to be a writer.

How do you keep going? What happens when you get rejected? What happens when you get published? How do agents work? What does an editor actually do? How do you make a writing life that you can enjoy rather than constantly feeling that everyone else is doing better than you?

The Writer’s Edit

Then we have The Writer’s Edit, and I think this is going to be a really special week.

We have brought together four experts, each with a very different area of expertise, because writing a book is only one part of the journey.

There is the idea. The writing. The rewriting. The moment when you know something isn’t quite working but can’t for the life of you work out why. Then there is editing, finding an agent, understanding publishing and working out what happens to your book once you finally decide it is ready to leave your laptop.

Our four experts — Sophie Hannah, Emily Winslow, Jon Appleton and Jenny Savill — bring different perspectives and a huge amount of experience to that whole process.

And that is exactly why I am so excited about it.

Rather than having one person giving you one view of how writing and publishing work, you have four people who really know their particular corner of the industry.

There will be workshops and group conversations, but there will also be the opportunity to ask the questions that actually matter to you and your book.

Perhaps you’ve written 70,000 words and have absolutely no idea whether the story works.

Perhaps you’re on draft six and can’t see the wood for the trees.

Perhaps the book is finished but the idea of approaching an agent terrifies you.

Or perhaps you’re right at the beginning and simply want to understand how you get from I think I have a story to I have a book.

And, as always, there will be time.

I don’t want people flying all the way to a Greek island only to spend seven hours a day sitting in a classroom. Some of the most useful conversations happen over breakfast, walking back from the beach or when somebody asks a question over dinner and suddenly everyone around the table joins in.

You will have access to four people with an enormous amount of knowledge between them — but you will also have the sea, the sunshine, good food and space to go away and actually do the writing.

For me, that combination is what makes a retreat work.

And then, back to the readers…

We have two writers I am absolutely thrilled are coming to Naxos…

Patrick Gale and Georgina Moore.

Our retreat with Patrick and Georgina is called Home Truths, which feels perfect for two writers who understand so much about families, relationships, secrets, love and belonging.

This one is for the readers.

There is something quite magical about sitting with the person who wrote a book you loved and being able to ask, Why did you do that? Where did that character come from? Did you always know it would end like that?

Not at a huge literary festival with 500 other people.

Around a table.

That is the bit I love.

And finally… murder

Well, not actual murder. We hope.

We finish our 2027 season with bestselling thriller writer Chris Carter, who joins us for Written in Blood: A Week of Story & Suspense.

Chris’s books are VERY dark.

Naxos isn’t.

So I think the combination is going to be rather wonderful.

What we want Naxos Creative to be

Ros, Neil and Nola decided very early on that we didn’t want Naxos Creative to become enormous.

That was never the point.

We wanted to create the sort of retreats we would want to go on ourselves: small enough that everybody knows everybody’s name, relaxed enough that you never feel you are being marched through a programme, and welcoming enough that you can arrive completely on your own and never feel alone.

We wanted our authors and experts to be part of the week, not people who appear for a session and then disappear again. To sit around the same table, come to dinner, have a swim, join the conversations and become part of the group.

And we wanted there to be space.

Space to read. Space to write. Space to think. Space to have a ridiculously long lunch, go for a swim, wander off with your book or stay up far too late talking to somebody you only met three days ago.

As we grow, that matters to the three of us more than ever.

Of course we want to discover new places and bring more extraordinary writers and experts to our retreats. But we don’t want to lose the thing that made us start Naxos Creative in the first place.

Small groups. Brilliant people. Beautiful places. Unhurried days.

And always, a place at the table.

So, yes, 2027 is getting bigger.

But Naxos Creative isn’t.

And I think that’s exactly how we want it.

Ros x