Sylvia Drummond Wright needs to escape. A Toronto-based, Giller-longlisted novelist who’s been married thirty years, she secretly buys a dilapidated old lodge in New Brunswick and plans to move there with her grandmother and her disabled adult daughter. But her husband, Kent, takes over and, capitalizing on his wife’s success, turns the lodge into a business venture — a writing retreat. Sylvia is determined not to have anything to do with the Wright Retreat, but as an eclectic group of people converges in the renovated lodge by the water, compelling stories and beautiful friendships emerge, and Sylvia finds herself drawn in. There’s Janice, a residential school survivor. Irma, whose husband has dragged her here, and who carries an unbelievable grief. Veronica and Dot, who each carry terrible secrets connected to this very lodge, which used to be a Catholic girls’ home and was the site of unbelievable cruelty. By the time the retreat is over, not a single person is unchanged — least of all Sylvia. Even the lodge itself has been transformed from a place of terror to one of healing. The Wright Retreat is an irresistible celebration of story, friendship, and the astonishing power of connection.

Sue White was born in New Brunswick and moved from one New Brunswick city to another. As a teenager her family moved to the Kingston Peninsula and she only left long enough to earn her BA and BEd at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. Settling on the peninsula, she and her husband raised four children and ran a small farm while she taught elementary school. Since retiring she is grateful to now have the time to work on her writing and the freedom to regularly visit her new granddaughter in Alberta. Her previous books include Ten Thousand Truths and The Year Mrs. Montague Cried, which won the Ann Connor Brimer Award. Visit her website at author-susan-white.blogspot.ca.

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Sasha Singer-Wilson ia a multidisciplinary artist. She works in performance, theatre, writing, music, and facilitation, and support others in crafting and sharing their stories, and connecting to their authentic voice. She is grateful to live on the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, as well as the Traditional Territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Wendake-Nionwentsïo in Tkaronto/Toronto. She is a settler of Ashkenazi Jewish and European descent, with Lithuanian, Italian, and Irish ancestry. With a practice rooted in the project-specific exploration of creative form and process and the tensions and play between them, her work explores climate justice, place, intimacy, caregiving, ritual, intergenerational relationships, and the voice. She is curious about how we might centre care, relationality and decolonization in learning, scholarship, creation and performance. She graduate of the BFA Acting Conservatory at York University, I have an MFA in Theatre and Creative Writing from The University of British Columbia. She has trained and worked with Soulpepper, Boca del Lupo, The Arts Club, Jumblies, Convergence Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Theatre Gargantua, One Yellow Rabbit, PTC, pounds per square inch performance and SummerWorks. Teaching and facilitation are prominent and meaningful parts of her practice, and she has led workshops and taught courses in theatre creation, voice, and creative writing with over a dozen organizations across Turtle Island. She is honoured to teach/learn voice and speech at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre and York University.

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