The Connecticut Coast
October 18-21, 2025
“Without Gateless, my book never would have been born.”
~ Mary Gauthier, author of Saved by a Song, St. Martin’s Press
The Experience
Home to pink granite and a resting spot for seals, the award-winning, pristine Madison, CT coastline is a writer’s paradise.
Our 9-bedroom, 3-story quintessential New England Beach house has a seaview from almost every room, proximity to miles of beach, nooks for reading, and a huge writing salon for creating.
This is where we walk the beach labyrinth, feast on personalized meals from our private chef, receive bodywork, and write like we’ve never written before.
The New England fall retreat is our longest-standing retreat and has alchemized writers to create some of the most domain-changing work of their lives.
The Method
No other writing retreat in the world gives you what Gateless Writing does: a hive of support for the emerging and established writer.
Gateless was born at the intersection of Zen Buddhism and brain science and is designed to radically nurture you. Every session starts with energy work, Thai head massage and somatic prompts that interrupt the brain’s negative feedback loops and open up imagination, innovation and long term memory.
Personalized and positive peer review shows you where your innate talent lives and the unique genius of your singular story.
This is where the spirit of the word comes alive.
Result
From this retreat, writers have finished memoirs, started blockbuster fiction careers, been picked up by top literary agents, and published with the Big Four publishers.
You will generate more writing in four days than most writers do in a year, and experience a writer’s “high” of pure bliss.
This is where you find your artistic community. And where you know, for sure, you can change your world with the power of the word.
Do you belong here? Will you be able to write? At retreat, all questions fall away. Gateless welcomes you with warm arms, and your creative urge is, finally, answered.
“There’s nothing like a writing retreat with Suzanne Kingsbury, she’s a guru, a magician and a fairy godmother. When you’re in her retreat, your work comes alive, you can’t help it. It’s an out-of-body experience that makes you feel like you flew through the night and hit the stars.”
~ Marshall Chapman, singer/songwriter and bestselling author of Goodbye Little Rock and Roller
Room and Board
The retreat is all inclusive. Chef prepared meals with personalized attention to dietary restrictions. We eat down by the ocean or up at the big dining room table.
Spacious bedrooms open to the sea breeze. This turn-of-the-century house has a huge fireplace, beadboard, plenty of blankets, and a private beach. Please fill out the form below to register and choose your room. Depending on room choice, all inclusive prices range from $2500-$3800.
The Schedule
We start at 4 pm, on Friday, October 18. We eat a communal dinner at 6 PM and enter our first Gateless Writing Salon at 7 PM. From that day on: Breakfast 8 AM to 9 AM, then our Morning Writing Salon 9 AM to 12 noon. We take a daily break from 12 noon to 3 PM, when you can nap, wander the seashore, or walk the beach labyrinth. We come together to write the roof off in the Afternoon Writing Salon from 3 PM to 6 PM. Then we all gather over dinner at 6 PM. Our Evening Writing Salon follows at 7 PM, with delicious desserts and sensory treats. On our last day, we eat breakfast at 8 AM, come together for our final Morning Writing Salon, and a closing farewell ceremony to celebrate the incredible writing done. We finish at 1 PM after lunch on October 21.
Travel
You can fly into Tweed New Haven Airport (20 minutes away) or Bradley Airport, Hartford, CT (1 hour away). Ubers are available from there. You can combine your retreat with a visit to NYC (2 hours), Providence (1.5 hours), or Boston (2 hours). The Amtrak or Metro North train from New York takes about 2 hours and leaves from Grand Central Station for Union Station in New Haven every hour. From there, take the 20-minute uber ride to Madison. If you are driving, there is plenty of parking at the seaside manse.
“This was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had. I cried as the plane was taking off, I am having serious withdrawals, I picture us in our circle, at that glorious happy table and I want to be back there again with my new lifelong friends. I am transformed.”
~ Helida Dodd, Florida
Your Retreat Leader:
Suzanne Kingsbury is the founder of Gateless Writing, a worldwide literary arts organization. An internationally-acclaimed, award-winning novelist, her books have been published by Scribner, optioned for film and translated widely abroad.
After completing her graduate work in creative writing and the literary arts, Suzanne went on to research creative brain science from studies done at Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and the National Institutes of Health. In conjunction with her Fulbright work in Buddhism, she developed Gateless, a methodology that ceases negative activity in the critical centers of the brain, so that creativity, long-term memory, and imaginative intellect can move fluidly and dynamically to the forefront while creating.
In 2014, she founded the Gateless Academy, a post-graduate book-building program based on the method that has graduated writers who have won top literary awards, been represented by the The Bent Agency, Inkwell Management, Writers House, Park, Fine & Brower, Carol Mann Agency, and more. These writers have been published with Random House, Hachette Books, Harpers Business, St. Martin’s Press, Simon & Schuster, and independent presses in the United States and abroad.
Concurrently, she founded The Gateless Certification Program, a leadership-based program that trains high-achieving professionals across industries in the Gateless method. There are now over 100 Gateless certified teachers worldwide, teaching, speaking, and leading in all sectors.
Suzanne also serves as a mentor and collaborator with authors whose books are shifting the paradigm and changing the cultural domain. These include Jennifer Barrett’s Think Like a Breadwinner, Denise Cox’s forthcoming book, What Will They Say? On the Secrets We Keep (Atria, Simon & Schuster); Deepa Purushothaman, Public Policy Program Leader in Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School on the launch of her debut book on women of color and power, The First, the Few, the Only, (Harper Business); and CNN hero, Vicki Sokolik, author of the book, If You See Them (Spiegel & Grau), on her activism and legislative work advocating for homeless teens with her son, Cameron, through their nonprofit, Starting Right, Now.
Suzanne’s work has been featured in Glamour Magazine, People Magazine, The LA Times, O Magazine, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and many others. Thrive Global named the Gateless Retreats the top Writing Retreat of 2017 and the 2013 Writer’s Guide named Suzanne as one of the experts on creativity and the imaginative process. She has been trained in Shamanic journeying, Thai head massage, and Reiki, and uses these modalities when moving writers into the theta brain or “flow” state. Suzanne lives and works in southeastern Connecticut, and she hosts at-home and destination Gateless retreats 3-5 times per year.