The 2024 winner of the Great River Writer’s Retreat, Camilia Cenek, will read from her work and discuss the project she is working on during her residency at The Brewed Book (1524 N. Harrison St., Davenport) on Thursday, August 29 at 6:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Camilia Cenek is a writer and editor. She has BA and MA degrees in English and a BA in Psychology. Places she has lived include France and South Korea; she now makes her home in Wisconsin. Her writing has appeared in Madison Magazine, The Good Life Review, The Sunlight Press, Women Who Submit, Creative Wisconsin Anthology, and others, and she has contributed on the editorial review committee for The Shallot: Journal of Mental Health, Art, and Literature. Her current project is to develop an essay collection about growing up with her mother’s mental illness. Find her at camiliacenek.com.

Cenek will be in residence August 26 – September 1, 2024, at Benet House Retreat Center in Rock Island, concentrating on revising the manuscript for her essay collection, which captures the author’s “experiences while growing up with a mother who suffered unmanaged mental illness and who died by suicide” when the author was nineteen. She will share some of her work-in-progress at this public reading.

The Great River Writer’s Retreat winner is selected from an applicant pool of writers from Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin across multiple genres, and allows the winner to spend a week working on a specific writing project they have underway. In 2024, we had our largest applicant pool in the history for the Retreat.

The Great River Writer’s Retreat Contest will open for all writers on November 1, 2024 and close on May 1, 2025. The retreat dates for 2025 are TBD.

The Great River Writer’s Retreat is generously sponsored by Dr. Nicolas Shammas and the Illinois Arts Council.