Paris
Gateless Writing and IML Publications present:
An enchanted literary escape to the city of light
March 16-20, 2026
“This isn’t the first time I have been in Paris, but the Gateless Retreat was a totally new lens, it’s where I finished one book and started the next. The writers you meet here will astound you. I’ve never felt the way I did with Gateless in Paris. This trip changed my writing and my life, forever. ”
~ Jen Barrett, Brooklyn, NY
The Experience
We do it all for you, Paris, a literary hub since the 16th century, is your literary home for five days. In an intimate group of eight writers, you will come together to write and then take to the cobblestones streets of the Latin Quarter for excursions to iconic bookshops, hole-in-the-wall galleries, and dinners out at famous eateries where Camus, Beauvoir and Gertrude Stein danced into the night and planned artistic revolutions. This retreat is curated for lovers of art, food, culture and the written word. It’s the literary adventure of a lifetime.
Your Abode
Your home during retreat is the beautiful Hotel Relais Médicis on a quiet corner of La Rive Gauche, where you’ll sleep in your own Renaissance-inspired room with an attached bath. Your daily writing salon will be steps away at the home of Dr. Murphy Lewis, a scholar of mythology and the founder of IML Publications. Filled with velvet couches, inspiring art and shelves of delicious books, her salon is from the 17th century, and steps from the Pantheon and Notre Dame, where once Simone De Beauvoir and John-Paul Sartre fell in love.
The Writing
Rising to the light of the Parisian sun, you will wake in the Hotel Relais Médicis and feast on breakfast before walking a few blocks to our first writing salon. There, you will receive Reiki, Thai head massage and a deep meditative prompt. We write together in the immediacy of the moment. Afterwards, Gateless feedback mirrors where the work holds talent and craft. Midday, we spread out for a Parisian-style lunch before a siesta and afternoon excursions and meals. One last writing session after dinner moves you onto the page before sleep, giving you a profound understanding of your literary power.
“This retreat was magical, watching the Sacré-Coeur fly by while moving to La Closerié de Lilas where once F. Scott Fitzgerald ate and drank was surreal. My writing took off. Suzanne knows how to give you an experience you could never imagine. Gateless nurtures the prose and Paris natures the muse. You’ll fly. The best thing I did that year.”
~ Kevin Jennings, New York, NY
The Result
Known for its inspiration, excursions and beauty, this retreat is also a high-touch experience. By radically nurturing you and elevating your writing, the retreat gives you the permission to take huge creative risks. Established writers discover personal narratives that have the power to change the domain. Celebrated non-fiction writers have finished books. And new writers have been surprised when novels came pouring out. Healers have healed and corporate olympians have peeled off layers of conditioning and found the bliss of what it means to be artistically alive. This is the escape you’ve been craving.
The Schedule
Arrive at the hotel by 3:00 pm ET on March 16th. We’ll orient you to the Latin Quarter that afternoon. We’ll meet for our first writing salon right before dinner at one of the most iconic literary eateries in Paris. Each day breakfast is at 8:30 am, and your Gateless Writing salon, just steps away, begins at 9:30 am. We break at 12:30 pm for lunch, excursions, a Parisian dinner at a favorite literary eatery, then back to Hotel Relais Medici for an evening of writing after dinner. We will say goodbye the morning of the 20th by 9:00 am.
Travel & Cost
From the Paris airport, take a quick Uber or cab ride to Hotel Relais Médici on the 16th. The retreat is all-inclusive, including a private room with an attached bath at the hotel, all the artistic excursions to inspire you, a private chef + dinners at the best literary hotspots, all your writing salons, which include feedback on your writing in-person and in your inbox, Reiki + Thai head massage and deep meditative prompts. $3400 includes everything. A $1500 deposit holds your space. Payment plans are also available.
“I’d go anywhere with Suzanne, but most of all to Paris. The literary loft we wrote in, our chef, all the hotspots she took us to—where we drank and ate exactly where the 1920’s literati used to! I went to bed singing every night. It was a time of lights, excitement and the kindest people I’ve ever met. I keep dreaming of going back. Plus, the stories I told, I never knew were inside me. It was simply mindblowing. ”
~ Collin Leech, Massage Therapist, Brattleboro, VT
Your Retreat Leaders:
I. Murphy Lewis is the author of Across the Divide to the Divine: An African Initiation (2024) and Why Ostriches Don’t Fly and Other Tales from the African Bush (1997). After her initiation with the Maasai Warriors in Kenya, Lewis left her executive position with the Fashion House, Badgley Mischka, to complete a Masters and PhD in Mythology with an Emphasis of Depth Psychology and Culture at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She lives and writes in Paris, working psychoanalytically and shamanically with private clients in the Akashic Records and facilitates a writing group on Fridays at 12 pm EST on Terri Trespicio’s New Rules. As founder, she oversees IML Publications, LLC and the Global Voice® Foundation.
Suzanne Kingsbury is an award-winning, internationally acclaimed author whose work has been translated widely abroad and optioned for film.
In 2007 after graduating from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with Frank Conroy, and the Bennington College Masters in Fine Arts in Writing and the Literary Arts program, Suzanne founded Gateless Writing, a global literary arts organization whose unique methodology combines brain science, ancient Zen techniques, and therapeutic nurturing to develop writers’ unique talent and singular genius, enabling them to move through residual blocks and create domain-changing prose.
Suzanne is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and the Oxford Town Fiction Award and her work has been profiled in Rolling Stone Magazine (European edition), The Guardian, The L.A. Times, O Magazine, BuzzFeed, Bustle, Ms Magazine, Thrive Global (named Top Writing Retreat of 2017), NPR syndicates, and more.
Suzanne is also trained in Reiki and certified in Thai head massage and can “read” a writer through touch. She began working as a scribe channel while she was leading her first Gateless Teacher Training in 2014, receiving messages from a divine source of unconditional love that helped writers find clarity and power in their words. As a writing intuit, she uses the sacred spirit of the word to understand deep patterning and repeated archetypes in a writer’s work, that leads to profound alchemy in their lives.
Through retreats, workshops, one-on-one intensives, and career training programs, Suzanne has helped countless writers on their way to landing top agents, signing lucrative book deals and winning prestigious literary awards. Her writers have also been profiled in some of the world’s top media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, The Jane Pauley Show, the Today Show, CBS, NBC, ABC and more. She believes if you are a writer, you have been tapped by the divine to be a conduit for a message only you can tell and that writers can move a crowd with the power of their story.