Novel Bookcamp: A Place to Be Authentic (and Maybe Get an Agent)
Authenticity: we treasure it, and we want to provide it for readers. But what does that mean when the personal and professional collide?
—Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
Why do so many of my interactions with authors and writer service providers feel like playing pretend?
In emails and Zoom calls, manuscripts and marketing materials, I can't help feeling that many of the people I interact with at work are fronting and expecting me to play along.
Some of these individuals seem to be in their element, having fun with representing themselves, which I love and feel inspired by. But I'm equally affected by others who seem burdened by the responsibility of self-representation. They might be enjoying some of the benefits of publishing's transition from corporate and exclusive to a cottage industry that rewards self-starters. At the same time, the deprofessionalization of marketing has saddled them with taking their image into their own hands. That can be complicated for people, including me.
There's irony here, because if I've learned anything in my ten years in the writer services industry, it's that it's nearly impossible for writers to give or hear truly authentic feedback at the same time we're socially performing. We can speak. We can listen. But there's always an unsettled feeling that if we had been able to be more comfortable, more ourselves, the interaction could have gone further to the heart of the book. That goes for service providers as well as writers.
This issue just gets more acute to me as I head into middle age in the age of AI. On the one hand, I have paid fairly serious dues over the past ten years to acquire a set of literary and social skills that help me provide particular services in the most authentic way I know how. On the other, I'm increasingly worried that the level of authenticity that authors and writer service providers require to reach their potential is being degraded with the burden of self-marketing and the rise of machine proxies.
I know I'm not alone in asking myself, do I re-tune my capabilities and go with the flow? Or do I try to marshal what resources I have and continue to pursue authenticity?
I took all of these concerns with me when I interviewed Ekta R. Garg, the new executive director of nonprofit writers' workshop/retreat Novel Bookcamp. Ekta had contacted Winning Writers about whether we might be able to provide some publicity for the upcoming season of Bookcamp (June 13-19, 2027). The rest of this article is based on what I learned in my conversation with Ekta, a series of interviews conducted at Bookcamp by the Midwest Writers Room in June 2026, and the website of the Siena Retreat Center, a former convent where Bookcamp takes place.
Green flag #1: Ekta Garg got real with me
I'm super tired of how writing retreats are normally advertised. Online ads push us towards the Instagrammable extremes of luxury or austerity: castles, cruise ships, and boutique hotels on the one hand, or windswept ranches and low-plumbing shacks on the other. The attendees all seem to be tanned and beaming. The organizers either look like millionaires or glamorous wastrels. I get that the marketing is aspirational. But is "aspirational" still authentic in 2026? To some people, maybe. But for most of us, "coping" or, at times, "not coping" are the actual conditions of our lives and the environments in which we write. The actual conditions for our readers.
For this reason, when I talk to fellow writer service providers, I try to push through the "aspirational" and get to stories about coping and not coping. They're usually not expecting it, and it's not always comfortable. But in 2026, the glimpse of the human is worth more to me than staying in my comfort zone.
Ekta Garg was willing to go there with me. She told me that before her first Novel Bookcamp in 2024, which she attended as a writer, she was performing okayness. Her father had passed at the start of that year. She was doing the best she could to work on her books and marketing at home, but being an adult and keeping up appearances didn't give her much of a chance to process her grief. When she got to Bookcamp, her favorite place was her room, where she could be by herself and decompress.
Obviously, there were professional benefits to Bookcamp as well: getting back into the classroom setting helped Ekta dial back into the focus of what her writing needed. She was able to spend time thinking about her next steps in her career, which eventually led to the release of her third book in 2025. But my big takeaway was this: A week of not performing okayness had allowed her to experience actual okayness, and she brought that authenticity with her when she went home. The groundedness helped the release of the book and opened space to contemplate the next career steps.
Green flag #2: Bookcamp seems fairly accessible to the independent-minded
Aspirational advertising is often covertly conformist. "Discover your individuality, and you'll be more like these people in the photos." That two-facedness really rankles with me, and I know it does for many Winning Writers clients, who tend to be independent-minded and largely self-taught. From what I heard from Ekta, Bookcamp leaves participants plenty of room to do things their way. She was able to answer all my objections in a way that got me thinking about going to Bookcamp myself, which I was surprised by:
"People are a lot to deal with."
It sounds like it's easy to spend time alone at Novel Bookcamp. Their website emphasizes the social opportunities, like talking during meals and in the evenings, but in talking to Ekta, I learned that it's equally assumed that a number of writers will be spending time on their own. The camp takes place in a spiritual retreat center, so the setup is easy on the central nervous system. And the workshop formats are designed to keep feedback discussions safe for all participants.
"I work best in my own comfort zone."
Novel Bookcamp gives you the freedom to recreate your comfort zone in your own space. Everyone has their own room and bathroom, and the facilities are air-conditioned. All meals are included in the cost of attendance, and the retreat center also has kitchen facilities where writers can store their own food. Sensory safety equipment is A-okay (like sunglasses and earplugs, which I myself am never without), and there are opportunities to take breaks throughout the day.
"I'm too busy, or I'm in a difficult place emotionally."
From the sound of it, so was Ekta, and that's exactly why she needed it. Novel Bookcamp gave her six days of high-quality time with experts to escape her grief and go back to something familiar: learning the next level of the nuts and bolts of the craft. It was a time investment, but it paid off in the increased sense of direction and overall health, both literary and personal.
"I'm a self-taught person. I don't do authority."
The personnel at Novel Bookcamp have experience working with authors who don't trust authority (I'm raising my hand here). The instructor bio page shows that career-wise, they've all attained a level of experience that typically puts people past the pettier forms of displaying authority, like showing off or power plays. Participant testimonials indicate that instructors know that their authority is most useful when it's helping authors towards their own goals.
Green flag #3: Bookcamp doesn't compromise on its principles just to make money
Ekta reached out to us for a promotion because Bookcamp has no funds to advertise, and after taking a closer look at what they offer versus what they charge, I'm not exactly surprised. The Workshop program—where writers get a full week of instruction and seminars that last most of the day—is $2,200. That might seem like a lot at first glance, but a closer look shows that Novel Bookcamp is head-scratchingly affordable for what it offers.
For example, the base cost to stay at Siena Retreat Center outside of Bookcamp is about $130 a night including meals, which means that your whole room and board comes to about $780—unusually affordable for a week away. The remaining $1,420 breaks down to about $236 per full day of workshops for those in that program, which, considering the small class sizes and the level of experience the instructors bring, is... Wait, I'm not actually sure how the Bookcamp board is able to feed themselves after paying the instructors. The fact that they're able to do so much with such a small cashflow is a testament to what a labor of love it is. I'm glad to spread the word about an organization that operates on that level.
Green flag #4: You might even get an agent
Two more objections I've heard from authors about writers' retreats are:
"This industry is just fake. I'm tired of all this marketing and encouragement when my odds of success are really small."
and
"I can get all the same benefits from the comfort of my home."
I'm normally really sympathetic to both of these positions, but Novel Bookcamp actually does have literary agents visit for the last two full days of Bookcamp every year. The agents sit on a panel where they discuss the state of the industry and take questions from writers, and then each of them is contracted to do an hour-long presentation on the last day of camp.
The agents also participate in the Slush Pile Read. Writers at Bookcamp can submit their query letters (minus any identifying information) to be read aloud in a live session where the agents will raise a hand at the part where they believe they would have stopped reading if the query had come across their desk. Then they offer feedback on how to make the query better. Having such close access to the agents has led to authors leaving Bookcamp with offers of representation.
Authenticity and agents aren't all Bookcamp brings to the table. The physical setting encourages deep focus, and all three programs—the Workshop, the Retreat, and the Book Coach—facilitate positive creative friction that's both artistically inspiring and socially safe. The boost in focus and productivity gets participants back to a bedrock of creativity that's always there under the distractions of adult life.
A place for real people
No venue can be 100% authentic. There has to be some performativity for things like tact and graciousness, for example. And some writers are simply performative people in certain ways. But these are natural, necessary, human types of performativity I have no issue with. What I object to is when marketability starts to get in the way of genuine human connection. And I'm satisfied that that's not what's happening at Bookcamp. In fact, it sounds like Bookcamp is a place that preserves and models groundedness in a way that more venues, both in and outside of the industry, could learn from. It's a place for real people in the real world of 2026.
Novel Bookcamp is now accepting applications for the workshop retreat running from June 13-19, 2027, at https://novelbookcamp.org/
Categories: Advice for Writers, Annie in the Middle
