Our Annual Caboose Farm Retreat

With: Gary Schmidt, Liz Bicknell & Kathryn Erskine

Sunday, November 1, 2026 4:00 PM - Friday, November 6, 2026 11:30 AM ET

Price: $1775 + lodging

Make lifelong writer friends with this six-day, five-night getaway. Faculty and writers will eat together, walk together, laugh together, and of course write together.

Our home away from home is the lovely Caboose Farm, a 200-acre event venue located in Sabillasville, Maryland, not far from Baltimore, MD, Washington, D.C., and Harrisburg, PA. The countryside property offers rustic charm, modern amenities, walking paths and, yes, a caboose.

Join faculty members, best-selling and award-winning authors Gary Schmidt and Kathryn Erskine, and former Executive Editorial Director at Candlewick Press, Liz Bicknell, for this week, designed to enable you to take a break from the 'real world' and make progress on your writing, all the while surrounded by your peers.

New for 2026: We’re bringing a private chef and her team!

What To Expect:

Our Caboose Farm event is predominantly a writing retreat. You will have quiet writing time through lunch each day. After lunch, we will offer an optional writing prompt, and then you may continue writing in the afternoons. We will come together for lunch and dinner.

Each participant will have two 30-minute one-on-one meetings, each with a different instructor, during which they can bring pages, discuss projects, and brainstorm.

Writers will come away, we hope, with more pages written, editorial guidance and a community of writer friends.

Our week includes:

  • Comfortable accommodations with optional price points

  • Ample quiet work space

  • Communal meals prepared by a private chef

  • Many opportunities to connect with faculty formally and informally

  • Two one-on-one meetings, each with a different instructor

  • Daily writing time

  • Optional prompts

  • Relaxed community time with fellow writers, creating space for reflection, experimentation, and writing.

To preserve meaningful interaction and discussion, this workshop has a minimum of 13 participants and a maximum of 18.

Our Faculty

Liz Bicknell has worked as a children's book editor for more than 25 years. Most recently, she was Executive Editorial Director at Candlewick Press, working with such luminaries as M.T. Anderson, Ekua Holmes, Gregory Maguire, Jon Klassen, Laura Amy Schlitz, and Carole Boston Weatherford. Books she has edited have won the National Book Award, the Caldecott Medal, the Coretta Scott King Medal, and many other awards.

Kathryn Erskine is the author of seven novels for young people, including National Book Award winner, Mockingbird, and Jane Addams Peace Award honor book Seeing Red. She has also authored several picture books, her latest with artist Keith Henry Brown, My Dad is a DJ, as well as a middle-grade biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Author of more than a dozen books for children and young adults, Gary Schmidt is a two-time Newbery Honor and Children’s Choice award winner, and a National Book Award finalist. He teaches writing, children’s literature at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI.

This Retreat Is For You If

  • You are drafting or revising a novel OR working on a series of picture books

  • You need or want dedicated time to work on a project

  • You feel like you’ve been writing in a vacuum, and you seek community

  • You are on a deadline and need to make progress on your project quickly

  • You’ve lost momentum on a manuscript

  • You would benefit from expert insight into your project or process

  • You’ve only met Whale Rock friends and faculty online, and you’d love the opportunity to connect in person

*NOTE: There is no submission required for this event.

Important Details

  • Students will share the multiple houses on the property for sleeping and writing. Each house is different, but comes with the usual bedrooms, bathrooms, living room, and kitchen.  

    There are three types of accommodations with some variables: 

    • Private rooms and shared bathrooms in the hall. (Within this category, we have numerous queen and king bedrooms, a few basement rooms, and two "lux" rooms with a shared bathroom and a shared private den space. This last option is ideal for two friends traveling together.) 

    • Private rooms and private bathrooms.

    • One twin room, which can be shared by two friends to bring costs down.

    **Contact us for an adjusted price if you would like to share a queen or king room with a friend or if you would like to take a full house with friends. (Additional sofa beds are an option for groups renting an entire home.)

  • Each house has a kitchen table and we aim to get a second table into each house as well.

    Additionally, the property has a bright, three-story event space with windows overlooking the property. Each floor has tables where you can work. There will be at least one "quiet" work floor and one chatting floor in the event space.

  • Breakfast: Students are responsible for their own breakfasts. There is a Wegmans grocery store 20 minutes by car, and we encourage students to do a shop on their way to their event on the first day. There is a local grocery store in Thurmont, MD that delivers through Instacart as well.

    Lunch & Dinner: Lunch and dinner will be provided by a private chef whose specialty is heathy, locally and ethically sourced meals.

    Snacks: Snacks, fruit, beverages and wine will be available to writers throughout the day. Writers will also have the opportunity to bake cookies with faculty members. This experience is optional, but it is a blast and a great way to bond with faculty.

    • Your tuition must be paid in full at registration. If you require a payment plan, please click on the pink Klarna button at checkout.

    • REFUNDS: OUR WORKSHOPS ARE NONREFUNDABLE. As such, we highly recommend you purchase travel insurance for this event. Over the last two years, we’ve had an increasing number of last-minute cancellations. While these are often due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, as a small business, we cannot absorb such losses.

    • CREDIT: If you are an accepted participant and withdraw prior to September 1, you may be eligible for Whale Rock credit if your spot can be filled from the waitlist.‍ ‍

  • We continue to give tremendous thought to your health and safety as well as the health and safety of our staff and instructors. We have chosen a location with ample outdoor space, but we recognize the event will be held in November. For the safety of everyone involved, we ask all participants to exercise caution for the two weeks prior to the workshop.

Register Now