About Fabled Retreats

Fabled Retreats offers writing retreats at interesting, fun locations throughout the year.

• These 4-day writing retreats include daily writing exercises & workshops, daily readings, daily meditations & journaling, a private 1:1 session, charming rooms in a quaint inn with daily breakfast, and excursions to explore the nearby town.
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Fabled Retreats offers writing retreats at interesting, fun locations throughout the year.

• These 4-day writing retreats include daily writing exercises & workshops, daily readings, daily meditations & journaling, a private 1:1 session, charming rooms in a quaint inn with daily breakfast, and excursions to explore the nearby town.
• The workshop provides valuable feedback and input on your writing efforts from both your host and the other retreat writers.
• After you make revisions following the group workshop, you can further fine-tune your stories and receive further guidance and insight into your work in an optional 30min private session with your host. This session can be scheduled during the retreat or after over Zoom.
• Enjoy the fun opportunity to share and showcase your work at evening readings.
•  In addition to the writing, there's special care paid to improve your wellness through meditation and journaling. With a special unique feature in the complimentary Know Yourself Gratitude and Daily Dump Discovery Journal, you will learn how to use your own thoughts and entries to gain greater insight, to understand and connect deeper to yourself for a happier, healthier you. 
• Combine your love of writing and traveling! Spend your days writing, people-watching, and exploring the enchanting local area. 
• Enjoy a relaxing break from the rigors of routine life. Disconnect from the daily grind and connect with nature and yourself.

Fabled Retreats offers writing workshops in fiction and memoir throughout the year.

• Workshops are six weeks long in varied genres, including fiction, memoir, or a fiction memoir joint class.
• The group size is kept small, with a maximum of only six writers. 
• The workshop class meets for one hour weekly over Zoom and workshops two stories. 
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Fabled Retreats offers writing workshops in fiction and memoir throughout the year.

• Workshops are six weeks long in varied genres, including fiction, memoir, or a fiction memoir joint class.
• The group size is kept small, with a maximum of only six writers. 
• The workshop class meets for one hour weekly over Zoom and workshops two stories. 
• Each story will have 30min of workshop time. During the first half of the workshop, the writer briefly shares any possible issues or problem areas, such as questions about the ending. The readers then discuss and share comments about the writing, including maybe brainstorming ideas for the ending. The writer remains silent, listens, and takes notes. After each reader finishes giving their remarks, the writer can then ask the readers questions, including areas that were not covered during the review. 
• Each writer will have two opportunities to workshop over the six-week course. With two workshops, you can workshop one piece, make revisions, and get follow-up feedback on your changes during your second workshop, or you can workshop a new story or chapter for your second workshop. 
• At the end of the course, you have the option to schedule a private one hr 1:1 Zoom session with me to discuss your writing and writing projects further. 

• Judy Chow started leading creative writing workshops over twenty years ago in Boston, MA, and taught a memoir writing course as an adjunct instructor for Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave, VA.
• Judy's work has appeared in The Sun Magazine since 2000. Stories include The Interpreter and contributions to The Sun’s treasured Readers 

• Judy Chow started leading creative writing workshops over twenty years ago in Boston, MA, and taught a memoir writing course as an adjunct instructor for Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave, VA.
• Judy's work has appeared in The Sun Magazine since 2000. Stories include The Interpreter and contributions to The Sun’s treasured Readers Write column, where readers "address subjects on which they're the only authorities." Scroll through the column to Judy's Readers Write essays in:  The Basement, The Woods, Holidays, My Country, Immigrants, Sibling Rivalry. While a contributing writer for Asian Pages (2001-2006), Judy published nearly 30 personal essays that evolved into her memoir manuscript, Translating Squiggly Lines.
• The first time she heard her kindergarten teacher speak English, Judy just thought the teacher spoke terrible Chinese. Her teacher’s incomprehensible words actually appeared visually as squiggly lines to the young, confused Judy. Translating Squiggly Lines is about Judy growing up as her family’s interpreter, translating her parent’s mail, explaining their doctor’s orders, writing their checks, forging sick notes to teachers, impersonating her mother on the phone to call the plumber, sitting with the life insurance salesman, slowly deciphering the details of whole versus term life.
• Her memoir chronicles a childhood spent rejecting her Chinese heritage in a white world, where she often forgot what she looked like, startling herself at a glimpse of her image in a passing mirror. Then grieving her grandma—who was all things Chinese to her and who helped raise her since her immigrant parents worked long hours—Judy returned to China in search of who her grandmother was. Instead, Judy discovered herself and her own uniquely blended identity, one that is created, not inherited.
• An excerpt from Translating Squiggly Lines was published in 2013 in the anthology, Unclaimed Baggage. In 2011, Judy was interviewed by ABC News -Washington DC affiliate about Translating Squiggly Lines (Judy's "15-min of fame" and ABC messed up her name!) In 2004, she was also featured in an article in Virginia's Daily News-Record about memoir writing and her memoir.