fourteenth Annual “Writing Down the Baja”
february 15-23, 2025
Todos Santos, BCS, Mexico
When you join “Writing Down the Baja” you will enjoy seven full days of workshops and writing for the 2025 creative writing retreat. Join award-winning author Ellen Waterston for a generative week of writing that explores the intersection of poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction and will encourage experimentation with language, format and genre. Reserve now for “Writing Down the Baja 2025,” celebrating the 14th year of Todos Santos’ longest-running creative writing workshop.
Please direct all questions concerning Writing Down the Baja, as well as lodging questions, to info@writingranch.com.
2023 Anthology
Here’s what you can expect:
daily writing workshops
multi-genre explorations
optional one-on-one Manuscript Lab sessions are for writers with a prose or poetry manuscript that needs a jump-start or fine-tuning
commemorative anthology of writing by 2024 participants
outstanding lineup of guest presenters and pop-up workshop leaders
nightly turtle hatchling release
gourmet Mexican cuisine served at Serendipity and sampled at selected restaurants in Todos Santos (included in participant fee)
Saturday night finale fiesta including participant reading
One-on-ones
Writing Down the Baja
Writing Down the Baja morning sessions are for emerging writers and writers returning to their practice of writing. Prompts are designed to improve craft, be it poetry or prose, and also enrich participants’ Baja experience.
Manuscript Lab
Do you have a prose or poetry manuscript that needs a jump-start or fine-tuning? If there is interest, “Manuscript Lab” one-on-one afternoon sessions for those wanting to map a project’s future or their future as a writer or who are developing a manuscript or a collection of poems will be conducted after lunch on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Poets: bring ten poems; prose writers: two chapters. There is an extra charge of $50 per person for those sessions.
Venue
Serendipity is a beachfront Hacienda-style boutique hotel 1.5 miles from town center. Congratulations to Serendipity for receiving the “Punto Limpio” (Clean Point) designation from the Tourism Ministry of Mexico. The designation is earned by meeting government hygiene standards following a two-month course. Those standards include a long list of protocols, COVID-related facility improvements, cleaning practices, food preparation and serving guidelines.
Workshop Size
Limited to 12.
2024 Todos Santos Writers
About the Faculty
High desert writer Ellen Waterston has published four poetry and three literary nonfiction titles, including, most recently, Walking the High Desert: Encounters with Rural America Along the Oregon Desert Trail. She writes a monthly column on ageing and ageism for The SOURCE, a Bend newsweekly, and is the author of “Sharing Common Ground,” an ongoing Oregon Desert Land Trust interview project conducted in in southeastern Oregon. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. In addition to being the recipient of fellowships and twenty competitive residencies, her awards include the 2024 Soapstone Award, the 2024 Holbrook Award, Obsidian Prize in Poetry, two-time WILLA winner in poetry, WILLA finalist in nonfiction, Foreword and Ellen Meloy finalist in literary nonfiction, and an honorary Ph.D. in Humane Letters from Oregon State University Cascades. She is founder of the Writing Ranch which, since 2000, has conducted workshops for established and emerging writers, and of the Waterston Desert Writing Prize, started in 2015 and adopted in 2019 as a program of the High Desert Museum. She serves on the faculty of OSU Cascades’ Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing and is currently working on a new collection of poetry and an historical nonfiction. She is based in Bend, Oregon.
Guest Authors and Presenters - 2025 guest authors and presenters to be announced.
Schedule (Schedule subject to change.) 2025 schedule to be announced.