Dates: 17th October – 24th October 2026
The retreat… now in our 5th year!
What are the stories you want to tell? Do you dream of starting (or finishing) a writing project, unblocking your creativity, or giving your work-in-progress some much-needed time and attention?
This is your chance to spend a week in the Italian countryside with three acclaimed writer-teachers — Elise Valmorbida, Tobias Jones and Clare Pollard — who have worked in various genres and media (fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, poetry, children’s literature, theatre and journalism). They’re big-hearted and very experienced teachers of creative writing, brilliant individually and as a team. They’ll help you hone your voice, structure your story, tackle dialogue, build narrative drive — and advise on any writing or publishing queries that crop up. ‘Haven’ is an opportunity to share ideas and to experiment, maybe to reimagine a manuscript which has become a burden.
The week involves morning workshops in small groups and one-on-one tutorials with each of our tutors in the afternoons. There are evening readings, plus — for those who fancy it — the option of yoga, tennis, table-tennis, swimming, cookery lessons, massages and walks. Sunday is a day of ease, and Thursday is a day off, a chance to visit local towns or simply concentrate all day on the writing.
To be at Villa Pia is to enjoy long lunches and traditional Tuscan four-course dinners at one big table, with good coffee, wine and Aperol spritz on tap. The week is naturally sociable, but you will also be able to enjoy solitude here, especially in our quiet writing spaces. Perhaps you’ll find inspiration in the misted dawns and deep, star-studded skies. We look after the essentials so that you can concentrate on your storytelling.
Consider this retreat a permission-granting to work on your words. Stimulating, creative and thoroughly relaxing, ‘A Haven for Stories’ offers that rare thing: a time and place to work out what story you want to tell, and how best to tell it.
The surroundings
Villa Pia is an award-winning family villa in Lippiano, a traditional Italian town on the border of Umbria and Tuscany. The area remains beautiful and unspoiled, almost as it was 500 years ago. Famed for inspiring the architecture, painting and sculpture of the Renaissance period, here human ingenuity and nature sit side by side.
The main house at Villa Pia is a 15th-century Italian country manor, once the summer residence of a Florentine family. The large, rustic house plus converted barn and stables provide 17 bedrooms, all with private bathrooms. Every room is unique, retaining original and traditional features and furnishings. There are also shared rooms or rooms with shared bathrooms. In the main house there are communal rooms for dining, and space for you to relax, chat with a fellow workshop-member or curl up with a book in the library. The house opens out onto a courtyard with an arbour – perfect for time outdoors, but close to the bar and coffee machine!
Book your place
Shared occupancy is priced at £1400 per person, single occupancy with shared bathroom at £1600, and single occupancy with en-suite at £1900. This includes all tuition, meals, drinks, snacks and facilities 24 hours a day.
To book please contact villapia@villapia.com
The Tutors:
‘A Haven for Stories’ was dreamed up during lockdown by Tobias Jones, Alice Vincent and Elise Valmorbida. This unique retreat, devised and revised each year by the same trio, has been fully booked since launching in 2022. Alice will be on maternity leave in 2026 and we will miss her, but we’re very excited to announce that our new tutor this year is Clare Pollard. As well as being an extraordinary writer, she’s also (we know, having worked with her in the past) an inspiring teacher and writing guide.
Clare Pollard
Clare Pollard’s sixth collection of poetry with Bloodaxe is Lives of the Female Poets. Her poem ‘Pollen’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Clare also writes in many other genres: her play The Weather was performed at the Royal Court Theatre; she wrote the non-fiction title Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind Children’s Picture Books; her adult novels are Delphi and The Modern Fairies. The latter was recently shortlisted for the RSL Encore Prize and won the Tadeusz Bradecki Prize. Clare’s second children’s novel, The Othernauts, is forthcoming in 2026 with Picadilly Press.
Elise Valmorbida
Italian Australian author Elise Valmorbida won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2019 for her acclaimed fourth novel, The Madonna of the Mountains (Faber), published internationally in several languages. Other published work includes essays, articles, short stories, poetry, and three non-fiction books. Her latest is The Happy Writing Book, a guide to creative writing and wellbeing, inspired by 20+ years of experience as writer-teacher. Elise is also an award-winning indie film producer and script consultant. www.elisevalmorbida.com
Tobias Jones
Tobias Jones is the author of six works of non-fiction and three novels, including The Dark Heart of Italy, The Po and Utopian Dreams. He has written and presented documentaries for the BBC and for RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, and his true-crime book, Blood on the Altar, was adapted into a six-part series by ITV. He has won the Daily Telegraph’s Football Book of the Year for Ultra and the Frontline Club’s Prize for his investigations into gangmasters in Italian agriculture. A regular contributor to the British and Italian press, Jones is the co-founder of Windsor Hill Wood (the subject of A Place of Refuge) and of Common Home in Parma. www.tobias-jones.com