Founder Lauren Carter has always had a deep love of travel, taking adventures, and creative writing! On a solo trip to Argentina, she took tango lessons and toured the country before writing about her adventures for the Toronto Star. She and her husband were together less than a year before hiking through a Hungarian mountain range, a journey that appeared in the Globe and Mail.
Teaching writing since 2004, she also loves facilitating workshops so when Manitoba writer Donna Besel invited her to co-facilitate Wild Writing in the Boreal at Falcon Trails Resort in 2018, she helped create a legendary retreat and fully embraced the adventure!
After locating unique venues and leading additional retreats, she made if official and founded Wild Ground Writing Retreats in 2024.
Wild Ground Writing Retreats hosts carefully planned writing retreats in inspiring locations to help writers of all backgrounds nourish their creativity and their artist selves.
Lauren Carter (she/her) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and is certified in teaching and training adult learners and in Amherst Artist & Writers (AWA) Writing Workshop Facilitation.
Her last book, The Longest Night, was a 2025 Quill & Quire Notable Book and has been described as “mind-bending…and utterly captivating” and “totally bananas.”
Her short story collection Places Like These was recommended as a Spring 2023 read by the Globe and Mail while her last novel This Has Nothing To Do With You won the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, when she also received the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. Her debut novel Swarm appeared on the CBC Canada Read’s long-list. She has also published two poetry collections: Lichen Bright and Following Sea.
She has studied creativity coaching with psychologist and coach Dr. Eric Maisel through the Creativity Coaching Association and has taught creative writing across North America and coached clients from around the world. Writers she’s worked with have obtained agents, signed publishing contracts, won awards, and learned how to settle more deeply into their work. She founded Wild Ground Writing Retreats in 2024.
An avid believer in the connection between nervous system health and creative flow, Lauren is committed to trauma-informed teaching and works with her event partners to foster nourishing atmospheres of safety, curiousity, support, and creativity.
Donna Besel loves writing of all kinds, and does workshops and presentations for schools, libraries, universities, conferences, and retreats. She grew up at West Hawk Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park and her “boreal stories” have appeared in various publications and earned national recognition. Her work has won the Prairie Fire Creative Nonfiction prize, the Great Canadian Literary Hunt, and has been longlisted multiple times for the CBC Literary Awards.The forests of Eastern Manitoba, where she has always lived, provide endless ideas and settings. Her first book, a collection of short stories called Lessons from a Nude Man, earned several award nominations. In 2021, the University of Regina Press published her memoir, The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family.
Ariel Gordon (she/her) is a Winnipeg/Treaty 1 territory-based writer, editor, and enthusiast. She is the ringleader of Writes of Spring, a National Poetry Month project with the Winnipeg International Writers Festival that appears in the Winnipeg Free Press.TreeTalk (At Bay Press, 2020) is the first book out of Ariel’s public poetry project where she hangs poems in trees and asks passersby to add their thoughts, ideas, and secrets. It was nominated for three Manitoba Book Awards. Her most recent book is Siteseeing: Writing nature & climate change across the prairies (At Bay Press, 2023), written in collaboration with Saskatchewan poet Brenda Schmidt, was shortlisted for the poetry award at the 2024 Saskatchewan Book Awards. In June 2024, her second collection of creative non-fiction, Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest, will be published by Hamilton’s Wolsak & Wynn.
Although neurotypical, Anita Allen is part of a vibrant neurodiverse family, a trait shared by at least one of the family pets. Her writing explores the intersection of neurodiversity and mental health, intergenerational trauma and breaking cycles. She has been offering writing workshops and retreats for the past six years, merging her passions for wellness and creativity. In 2023 she won second place in the Creative Non-Fiction Collective-Humber Literary Review Contest.
Anita is a Physiotherapist, Certified Coach, Co-Founder of Ignite Your Write, an Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) facilitator and graduate of The Humber School for Writers, The Sarah Selecky Writing School, and Spark Your Story Intensive, where she received mentorship from award-winning Canadian authors Rowan McCandless and Nicole Breit.
In her spare time, she does laundry, procrasti-knits, and enjoys doggy cuddles.
Conni Cartlidge (she/her) is a prairie poet and creative non-fiction writer. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Developmental Studies/Sociology from the University of Winnipeg, a diploma in Early Childhood Education from Red River College, and a Certificate in Adult Education, also from Red River College. She retired from her college instructor position in 2015 and has focused on her writing and her grandchildren since then.
Her work has been published at CBC Online, the Winnipeg Free Press, Pure Slush Books, the Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health, and Disability, Voices: The Journal of the Lake Winnipeg Writers’ Group, and in several anthologies. She enjoys sharing her work at public readings and on podcasts.
Conni is a member of the Manitoba Writers’ Guild, the Creative Nonfiction Collective Society, and the League of Canadian Poets. She has attended many Wild Ground Writing retreats and is thrilled to now be working with some of her mentors.
When Conni is not revising the manuscript of her first book, she is busy transforming her barren lawn into a bee and butterfly haven of native prairie plants. Or, she is watching bad reality tv.
Wild Ground Writing Retreats’ head office is located on Treaty One Territory, the traditional territory of the Anishnaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dene, and Dakota peoples and the homeland of the Red River Metis. As treaty people, we are grateful to make our home and livelihood on this land and endeavour to act in support of reconciliation.