WHAT MAKES the muskrat lodge WRITERS RETREAT SO SPECIAL?
The caliber of the instructors
Each retreat session features a maximum of four students and two bestselling author instructors: your host, Karen Dionne, and a guest instructor.
Karen has carefully selected guest instructors who are not only successful authors and excellent teachers, they’re warm, constructive, and supportive, and share her goal of helping you make your manuscript the best that it can be.
Your Host and Instructor
Karen Dionne
Psychological suspense, thrillers, commercial and book club fiction
Karen Dionne is the USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling author of the award-winning psychological suspense novels The Marsh King’s Daughter published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the US and in 28 other languages, and The Wicked Sister, also from G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
The Marsh King’s Daughter was named one of the best books of 2017 by iBooks, Hudson Booksellers, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Irish Independent, Library Journal, Shelf Awareness, and many other booksellers and reviewers, and was released by Lionsgate in 2023 as a major motion picture starring Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn.
The Marsh King’s Daughter was nominated for the Macavity Award and the Hammett Prize, and won the Barry and Crimson Dagger Awards for Best Novel of 2017. Both The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Wicked Sister were selected as Michigan Notable Books by the Library of Michigan. The Wicked Sister was also chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Thrillers of 2020.
Karen has been a guest lecturer at Cambridge University in England and is a popular speaker and teacher at writers conferences and MFA programs across the United States. She enjoys nature photography and lives with her husband on a small lake surrounded by forest in the middle of Michigan, where she spends far too much time exploring the natural world when she should be writing.
2025 Guest Instructors
June 23 - 27
Guest Instructor
Wanda M. Morris
Mysteries, thrillers, crime fiction, historical fiction, book club fiction
Wanda M. Morris is the acclaimed author of All Her Little Secrets, named as one of the “Best Books of 2021” by Hudson Booksellers and selected as the #1 Top Pick for “Library Reads” by librarians across the country.
Her novel, Anywhere You Run, was named One of the Top Ten Crime Fiction Books of 2022 by The New York Times. It has received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist and won an Anthony Award and the Lefty Award for Best Historical Novel of 2023, along with the 2023 Georgia Author of the Year for Mystery. Anywhere You Run was also longlisted for the prestigious Mark Twain Voice in American Literature Prize.
Wanda’s latest book, What You Leave Behind, has also received critical acclaim, including a starred review from Booklist and stellar reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. Named “One of the Best Books of the Year So Far for 2024” by Amazon editors, What You Leave Behind and has been featured in People Magazine, Us Weekly, Woman’s World Magazine, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Denver Post, and The South Florida Sun Sentinel.
A former corporate lawyer, Wanda is a member of Crime Writers of Color and serves on the Board of International Thriller Writers. She is married, the mother of three and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
July 23 - 27
Guest Instructor
Allen Eskens
Mysteries and thrillers
Allen Eskens is the bestselling author of The Life We Bury, The Guise of Another, The Heavens May Fall, The Deep Dark Descending, The Shadows We Hide, Nothing More Dangerous, The Stolen Hours, Forsaken Country, Saving Emma, and his latest novel, The Quiet Librarian.
He is the recipient of the Barry Award, Minnesota Book Award, Left Coast Crime Award, and Silver Falchion Award and has been a finalist for the Edgar® Award, Thriller Award, Anthony Award and Nero Award. His books have been translated into 23 languages.
Allen has a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota and a law degree from Hamline University. After law school, he studied creative writing in the M.F.A. program at Minnesota State University-Mankato, as well as the Loft Literary Center and the Iowa Summer Writer’s Festival. Allen grew up in the hills of central Missouri. He now lives with his wife, Joely, in greater Minnesota where he recently retired after practicing criminal law for 25 years.
August 13 - 17
Guest Instructor Jacquelyn Mitchard
Women’s fiction, suspense, commercial and book club fiction, young adult
Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times bestselling author of 23 novels for adults and teenagers, and the recipient of Great Britain’s Talkabout prize, The Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards, and named to the short list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, with more than 3 million copies in print in 34 languages. It was later adapted into a major feature film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Her novel Still Summer has also been adapted for a film still in production, and her teen trilogy The Midnight Twins, is in development for a limited series by Kaleidoscope Entertainment.
Mitchard’s essays have been published in magazines worldwide, widely anthologized, and incorporated into school curricula. She served on the Fiction jury for the 2003 National Book Awards and was editor-in-chief of Merit Press, a Young Adult imprint under the aegis of Simon and Schuster. She is a Distinguished Fellow at the Ragdale Foundation, a DeWitt Clinton Readers Digest Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and has taught in MFA program for Creative Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Miami University of Ohio, and Western New England University.
An avid Italian cook, she lives on Cape Cod with her husband and their nine children.
September 17 - 21
Guest Instructor
Lori Rader-Day
Mystery, thriller, and historical fiction
Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar® Award-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of The Death of Us, Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour.
Lori is the recipient of the 2016 Mary Higgins Clark Award, the 2022 Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel, the 2015 Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and both the 2018 and 2019 Anthony Awards for Best Paperback Original Novel. She has also been nominated for the Edgar Award, one of the highest honors in crime fiction, and the Thriller, Barry, Macavity, and Left Coast Crime Lefty awards. In 2016, Lori received the Outstanding Journalism Alumnus Award from Ball State University. She is a past recipient of the Indiana Author Award, winning the regional category in 2017.
She lives in Chicago, where she is co-chair of the mystery readers’ festival Midwest Mystery Conference (fka Murder and Mayhem in Chicago) and served as 2019-2020 national president of Sisters in Crime. She teaches creative writing for Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies.