The Heart of It Overview
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The Heart of It Overview 〰️
If you are considering applying for The Heart of It, or you just want to know more about what we do — start here. This is our overview page. Be sure to read the F.A.Q page, too!
TL;DR version: The Heart of It was founded by Desireé Dallagiacomo in 2016, and 2025 will be our 8th year of retreats. We have 3 core staff and over 100 alumni. You can read more in-depth about The Heart Of Its history here.
The Heart of It 2025 is at Oz Farm, on the traditional lands of the Hopland Band of the Pomo Indians (Sho-Ka-Wah or “east of the river” is the name of the people for themselves in the Central Pomo language), now called Point Arena, California in Mendocino County.
The Heart of It 2025 is a 5 day, 4 night writing retreat on a 240-acre private retreat grounds facilitated by Desireé Dallagiacomo a dynamic faculty of teaching artists. THOI consists of generative writing workshops, dialogues, editing and feedback workshops, cohort readings, time in the natural world, and self-guided independent time. Throughout the 5 day retreat, there is ample time to connect with other writers in workshop and organically. In 2025, we will be at the beautiful Oz Farm in Point Arena, California. 240 private acres. It is rustic. It is earthy. Keep that in mind as you consider applying, and we highly encourage you to look around their website to get a feel for the location and region. The farm is beautiful, and though we love it, it is not for everyone. If you have accessibility questions please reach out.
Each cohort is a small, curated group of diverse writers at varying and diverse points in their literary journeys. Each cohort consists of 14-18 writers, alumni teaching fellows, THOI core faculty, and Desireé.
Each day there will be time to explore the outdoors in whatever way feels comfortable for you.
The cabins are spread about the property and vary in distance and terrain. We are able to accommodate many ability levels due to the diversity of cabins, and if you have a specific question or need please reach out.
The Origins & Purpose: The Heart of It was founded by Desireé Dallagiacomo as a grassroots way to foster literary citizenship, community, and cultural wealth in our rich and diverse working class writing communities. It was born of and for the cultivation of self, story, kinship, and beloved community with particular interest toward writers who have experienced systemic barriers into literary and educational spaces. As a working class feminist writer who made her career in poetry slam and community writing spaces, Des experienced many lifelong barriers into academic literary spaces, and their pedagogies oftentimes felt out of alignment with the values she learned in community poetry spaces. Desireé learned how to teach and be in community in spoken word, poetry slam, and youth spoken word communities and much of those philosophies and practices have shaped The Heart of It. In the search for space rooted in communal knowledge and the principles of community education, The Heart of It was born. There are many writing retreats that honor this, and The Heart of It is just one of them.
The Heart of It aims to liberate resources, foster kinship, and help facilitate a space in which writers can share the valuable knowledge they carry and learn from each other while also deepening literary skills, resources, and practices. The Heart of It braids both informal teaching practices and literary theory.
The Heart of It welcomes writers of all skill levels, with particular interest in writers with working class and community backgrounds. THOI is for the writer who wants time, space, connection, and structure while engaging in the natural world. With minimal access to everyday distractions, writers have the opportunity to dive into their process and their projects.
The Heart of It is in August 2025.
First Years: 5 days & 4 nights, August 1-5, 2025.
Alumni: 5 days & 4 nights in, August 7-11 2025.
The Residency Community: 6 days & 5 nights, August 12-17, 2025.
The Heart of it is open to all writers interested in writing poetry and/or nonfiction. Our generative workshops are almost exclusively centered around poetry, but many writers in attendance work across genre. Though most of our alumni are poets, we have also had theatre makers, fiction writers, playwrights, essayists, and nonfiction writers in attendance.
The Heart of It is open to all genders with priority given to those of marginalized genders. THOI is especially interested in writers with limited access to a consistent literary education, community, and/or resources and writers with working class and community backgrounds. We’ve had mothers that write in their free time and have never published a word of it, college students that wrote their first poem shortly before they applied, viral youtube poets, extensively published poets, professors, folks with MFAs and long lists of accolades, Doctors, CEOs, motivational speakers, memoirists, creative non-fiction writers, fiction writers, and poets of all skill levels.
If The Heart of It feels right for you, we hope you’ll apply. If you have doubts or questions, please reach out.
In 2025, we will be at Oz Farm in Point Arena, California. 240 private acres. It is rustic. It is earthy. It is beautiful. Keep that in mind as you consider applying, and we highly encourage you to look around their website to get a feel for the location and region. The farm is beautiful, and though we love it, it is not for everyone. If you have accessibility questions please reach out. All activities, workshops, and meals will happen in the shared space (the community house, the barn., the fire pit, the redwood grove, etc) The cabins are spread about the property and vary in distance and terrain. We are able to accommodate many ability levels due to the diversity of cabins, and if you have a specific question or need please reach out. You will be required to walk anywhere from 200 ft to 1/2 mile to and from your cabin space, and we will accommodate to the best of our abilities. There are also vehicles to provide transportation to and from some cabins. Oz Farm is a working farm and you will encounter wildlife (rabbits, non-venomous snakes, gophers, bats, birds, deer, etc). Please take this into consideration when considering applying.
The days are structured, in part, with an emergent agenda. Through utilizing a semi-concretized and emergent agenda, each day will consist of a combination of 2-3 generative writing workshops, dialogues, craft talks, revision and editing workshops, independent time, and varying group activities. As a rough outline: each morning will be spent on your own, each afternoon will be spent in workshops and structured programming, and each evening will be spent in various social and communal activities (beach outing, bonfire, etc) while the late evening will be unstructured and is usually utilized to sit around a fire, get some extra rest, soak in the wood fired hot tub, share in deep conversation and tea drinking, read a book under the stars, or whatever else your heart desires. Each day, there are multiple opportunities to share your writing with your cohort, and most workshops culminate in a read back. Mornings will be spent on your own, and instruction will begin at 11am. You will be provided with 3 meals a day, and each member of the community is asked to contribute to the preparation process (chopping, setting the table, doing dishes, cooking, etc). You will have allotted downtime and quiet time, and there will be space each day to share your work with the group.
Our faculty is made up of a diverse, dynamic group of poets and community educators. In January 2025, we will link a full faculty page here!
This retreat is socially demanding. It is full of conversation, feeling, laughter, shared meals, shared ideas, invitations to be vulnerable, and space to be yourself. If group settings are not your thing, please deeply consider this before applying. The physical environment is a working organic farm and is built into a coastal redwood grove. We encourage you to be at least *comfortable* in the outdoors (don’t worry — there is running water, electricity, flush toilets, and real buildings lol)
We work hard to keep costs as low as possible.
Tuition is $1,500 for both the alumni and first year cohorts. With this tuition, we are able to fund scholarships, pay staff, afford our venue, and grow our capacity. Tuition covers everything that will happen from the time you step foot onto Oz to when you leave. Lodging, meals, instruction, and incidentals. You are responsible for your travel to and from the farm.
Tuition must be paid in full and there are no refunds. You can pay in one payment or via an automated payment plan from April-July.
Many writers are able to source funding from their universities, workplaces, community organizations, any many other ways. Upon acceptance, we will provide some in-house resources to help you source funding if needed.
If you would like to help make The Heart of It accessible, please consider donating toward tuition. Each year, there is a pool of money used as scholarship funds for the writers in most need.
This is our COVID policy. We take it very seriously. Every writer and staff member is required to provide proof of full COVID-19 vaccination prior to arrival. 72 hours before your arrival and upon arrival, you will be required to provide a negative test result (2 tests total). If you do not have access to COVID-19 tests, the THOI team will mail the needed tests directly to you. Masks will be required for travel to and from, but will not be required during the retreat.
Leading up to THOI, we may continue to adjust and implement additional protocols as mandated by the state of California and other governmental agencies.
Since 2020, we have hosted over 80 writers and have had no related COVID infections prior, during, or after The Heart of It. We worked very hard to keep our fellows and community safe, and we will continue to implement the same protocols in 2025 and beyond.
This retreat is in rural northern California, in a remote, wild location. One of the intents of this retreat is to disconnect from the outside world and connect with the natural world, yourself, your community, your writing, and your process. You will be sharing meals, bathrooms, bedrooms, communal space, outdoor space, and downtime with other writers.