You can't imagine in the early days how many women came and said they had never had a week where they weren't cooking for their family.

There were a lot of women coming who never had that freedom and never had been allowed to spend a whole week doing the thing that they loved to do.

Welcome back to working. I'm your host, Ronald Young Jr.

And I'm your other host, June Thomas.

June Thomas, it's wonderful to be chatting with you once again.

Tell me whose voice was that to be here at the top of the show?

So that was Judith Barrington.

She is a poet, a writing teacher, and for many years back in the 20th century,

she was the co-organizer of a beautiful writing retreat for women on the Mackenzie River in Oregon.

Oh, that sounds amazing. Why did you want to speak to Judith right now?

Well, she is delightful, but there were two other reasons. Number one, she has a book of

collected memoirs coming out in October, right at the beginning of October, which I really loved.

And number two, as I mentioned, along with her partner Ruth Gundal, she ran the flight of

the mind writing program for 17 years, starting in 1984.

And I have for a long time wanted to talk to someone about writing retreats.

And I figured she could tell me from the inside and without having anything to sell since

she hasn't been doing it for more than 20 years.

Yeah, that sounds incredible.

It also makes me very intrigued about writing retreats.

So I'm very, very excited to hear this interview.

But I'm assuming that you held back a little bit

something extra for our Slate Plus members. Oh, you know, I did. So Judith has been doing really

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