Last month, 10 emerging fiction writers from across the globe spent eight days off of Voidokilia Beach—that “all-bronze heaven” where Telemachus was welcomed by King Nestor in Homer’s Odyssey—as part of the Oxbelly Retreat, an all-expenses-covered gathering of authors, screenwriters, and artists in Messenia, Greece. Founded in 2015 by producer Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Oxbelly puts forth a new vision of the writers’ retreat, away from the traditional pay-to-play instructional seminars and toward something that looks more like a literary salon or college campus. Above all, the retreat’s focus is “the creative process and cultural nourishment,” said Oxbelly executive director Caroline von Kuhn.

Oxbelly was initially founded as a screenwriter’s retreat, with programs for both film and television writers. Since the addition of the fiction fellowship three years ago, it has become a site of cross-pollination between the worlds of film and literature. Fiammetta Rocco, longtime administrator of the International Booker Prize, noted a significant difference in energy between her first time speaking at the retreat, in 2023, and her second visit in 2024. “There were many more events and much more interaction between the film industry—script writers, storytellers, producers, directors—and the novelists,” she said, “and specifically a focus on, how do you turn a novel into a movie?” Among the filmmakers Rocco has crossed paths with at Oxbelly are Charlie Kaufman and Anna Winger, who are working on adaptations of International Booker shortlister The Memory Police and International Booker winner Kairos, respectively.

For fiction writers, the retreat is organized into two parts. The first four days are packed with daily workshop sessions led by Chigozie Obioma, Oxbelly’s fiction program director and a two-time Booker Prize finalist. At night, the fiction fellows are brought together with their screenwriting counterparts for film screenings, readings, and lectures by advisors and special guests. The evening programming at this year’s retreat, held June 28–July 6, included a presentation from Katie Kitamura about the thematic continuities between her three novels Audition, A Separation, and Intimacies; a talk from Boyhood director Rick Linklater about the influence of French New Wave film on his work; and filmmaker Annemarie Jacir in conversation with composer Ben Frost on writing a “shared aural language.”

The second four days are intended to give fellows space to “digest and enjoy the surroundings” and engage in more prolonged exchanges with their peers, advisors, and special guests, von Kuhn said. This year, the only piece of daytime programming in the second half was a session on writer-publisher-agent relationships, led by Emma Shercliff of Laxfield Literary Associates and writer and editor David Ebershoff.

This is one of the only aspects of the retreat that focuses on industry talk—and intentionally so, von Kuhn said. The goal of the fiction fellows’ workshops, which meet every day for the first four days, is to promote a more “expansive way of thinking” about writing than the fellows might encounter in the world of publishing. This year, the workshops were led by authors Ishmael Beah and Namwali Serpell. Even at more business-centric moments, like Shercliff and Ebershoff’s visit, Oxbelly uses a roundtable format to flatten power dynamics between the earlier career writers and their mentors, von Kuhn said.

Konstantakopolous’ production company Faliro House, the Captain Vassilis & Carmen Constantakopoulos Foundation, and a number of other patrons enable Oxbelly to cover all expenses for the selected fellows, including accommodations in the five-star Costa Navarino hotel. This generosity, von Kuhn said, allows Oxbelly to target opportunity gaps when selecting its fellows, who this year hailed from Brazil, Greece, India, Jordan, Nigeria, the U.K., and the U.S. She added that the diversity of the group helps create a more supportive environment: “It’s not competitive because no one’s telling the same story and no one’s expressing themselves in even a comparable way.”

In Rocco’s experience, it is this generosity of self-expression—the sharing of stories, knowledge, connections, and experiences—that is truly at the heart of what Oxbelly does. “It was perfect cross fertilization of ideas, of working practices, of all sorts of things,” she said, “and I think it comes from the top with an ethos of generosity.”