FOOD WRITING

Food writing RETREAT

11 – 18 October 2025
  

Join Bland Badger host, Charlotte Bland, and guest host, Lucy Brazier, for an immersive yet informal food writing retreat. Charlotte and Lucy have worked in the cookbook industry for many years, as a photographer and writer respectively, before collaborating on the bestselling cookbook Christmas at River Cottage five years ago.

Now, inspired by the beauty of Villa Pia, the landscape and the incredible local produce, they have joined forces again to bring their knowledge and passion for food writing to the renowned Bland Badger retreat programme.

They are thrilled to invite three very special tutors to lead the creative and practical week of workshops and activities. Felicity Cloake, Mark Diacono and Molly Wizenberg will encourage, guide and develop your food writing skills, whether you are an enthusiastic beginner or a seasoned writer.

This transformative course promises a constructive and useful approach with the collective expertise of three of the most outstanding food writers in the UK and the USA.

Mark is keen to help you find your voice, bring confidence to your work, demystify the proposal and publishing process and connect with an audience through Substack and social media.

Felicity will focus on writing about the exciting combination of travel through food and digging into the details of recipe construction.

Molly looks at personal narrative, weaving memoir into food writing and how to rebuild memory and bring it to the page.

THE Programme

Large group workshops with each tutor

Free afternoons for writing

Smaller focused sessions with each tutor

Evening salons for a Q&A with each tutor

A day trip to a magical local produce destination

Optional cooking classes with the Villa Pia chef Gessy

A culinary curated brocante in the Villa Pia courtyard

Aperitivo talk from local author Christobel Kent

A day off from the retreat schedule and an opportunity to explore your surroundings, or write uninterrupted

Gala night of readings before the final feast

A confirmed programme for the week is provided to booked guests before arrival.

Optional Extras

• Food photography workshop with Charlotte

• One-to-one food writing memoir session with Lucy

• Cooking classes with the Villa Pia chefs

• Massage and treatments with Villa Pia’s beauty therapist

• Local visits including Piero della Francesca’s most famous work “The Madonna del Parto” and other local museums

PRICES

THE MAIN HOUSE

• £2295 per person Twin room, ensuite bathroom (to be booked as a group of two friends)

• £2350 per person Single room, shared bathroom with one other room

• £2525 per person Single room, ensuite bathroom

THE ANNEXE

• £2195 per person Twin room, ensuite bathroom (to be booked as a group of two friends)

• £2250 per person Single room, shared bathroom with one other room

• £2425 per person Single room, ensuite bathroom

Rooms are allocated on a first come first served basis. Full payment is required by 7 August 2025. The full payment is made up of a non-refundable £850 deposit and the remaining balance.

Please read the Bland Badger Terms &Conditions carefully before booking.

MEET THE TUTORS

Charlotte Bland - host

Charlotte is a photographer who specialises in shooting food, interiors and travel on film. After an Art History degree she developed her photography career with clients including Penguin Books, The Guardian, Bloomsbury, Chatto & Windus, Toast, Matilda Goad and Mud Australia. A commission for Selfridges’ Our House campaign saw her photos of everyday interior moments displayed on the store’s windows on London’s Oxford Street and book credits include For the Love of Lemons, Wild Figs & Fennel and La Vita è Dolce by Letitia Clark, Christmas at River Cottage by Lucy Brazier, Flavour by Ruby Tandoh and Frontières by Alex Jackson.

Lucy Brazier - host

Lucy is a writer and ghostwriter, focusing on memoir, food and lifestyle and working with high profile people to put their story on the page. Lucy began her career at the BBC before becoming a theatrical agent. She left London in 2006 to work alongside the chef and broadcaster, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and wrote her own book Christmas at River Cottage (beautifully photographed by Charlotte Bland), which has been a seasonal hit since 2021. Her latest non-fiction book The Honesty Box is a journal of a year in her kitchen, garden, village and marriage and is published by Bloomsbury.

Felicity Cloake

Felicity is a multi-award-winning freelance journalist and writer and Guardian columnist, and the author of seven books, including five cookbooks and the travelogues One More Croissant for the Road (Mudlark 2019), which was shortlisted for a Fortnum & Mason Food Book of the Year Award and chosen as a Radio Four Book of the Week, and Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey (Mudlark 2022). Her latest book, Peach Street to Lobster Lane, on cycling across the USA in search of American cuisine, is out on 5 June.

Mark Diacono

Mark is lucky enough to spend most of his time eating, growing, writing and talking about food. He has written a number of award-winning books, including A Year at Otter Farm and A Taste of the Unexpected (which both won Food Book of the Year), Sour (which was Food Book of the Year 2019 in The Sunday Times and Daily Mail, and nominated for a James Beard Award in the US), Herb, Spice, and Vegetables. Known for growing everything from Szechuan pepper to pecans to Asian pears, Mark's refreshing approach to growing and eating has done much to inspire a new generation to grow some of what they eat.

He was involved with River Cottage, appearing in the TV series, running courses and events at River Cottage HQ, and he has written four River Cottage books. Mark is a columnist for The Sunday Times, Delicious and Country Life, and his features have appeared in The Observer, Guardian, National Geographic, and others. He hosts the monthly Cafe Murano Book Club with Angela Hartnett, and writes to a global audience on his best-selling Substack: ‘Mark Diacono’s Abundance’. He is a figurehead of the food writing collective at Scribehound Food, and Writer in Residence at Limewood Hotel, England. His next book - Abundance - is published in August 2025.

Molly Wizenberg

Molly is a bestselling memoirist, James Beard Award-winning essayist, and teacher of personal narrative writing. She is the author of The Fixed Stars, an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book and a finalist for the Washington Book Award in biography and memoir. Her memoirs A Homemade Life and Delancey were both New York Times bestsellers. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Bon Appétit, where she was a columnist for three years. 

She also cohosts the weekly comedy-and-food podcast Spilled Milk. In other lifetimes, she wrote the blog Orangette (2004-2019) and co-founded the restaurants Delancey and Essex, both in Seattle, Washington. She writes the Substack newsletter I’ve Got a Feeling, which a very astute person once described as “a chronicle of enthusiasms.” She teaches writing workshops online and around the world. 

Christobel Kent

Christobel was born in London in 1962 and educated at Cambridge University. Several years of her childhood were spent living on a Thames sailing barge in Maldon, Essex, with her father, stepmother, three siblings, and four step-siblings. She has published seventeen novels, starting with four standalone thrillers set in Italy, followed by her six novels in the Sandro Cellini Florentine detective series. She has since written seven psychological thrillers, including the Sunday Times bestseller, The Loving Husband.

Christobel is always an inspiration to our guests, not just with her literary style, but also with her unique personal flair. Having split her time between Florence and the UK for twenty years, Christobel’s engaging talks offer exclusive insights into Florence, and provide a perspective that only a true insider can share.