Parkside Portal: Writer's Retreat and Catered Picnic

Plenty of structure, no distractions! This experience is designed to help you generate new pages, dive deep into your creative practice, and spend a nourishing day in community with other writers.
We'll meet at an underground art studio by Central Park, where you'll be greeted with coffee and tea before settling in for our first two-hour writing session. Following the Pomodoro Technique, writing sessions will be divided into 25 minute intervals of focused writing, followed by 5-minutes of meditative movement, guided by our facilitator Katya Borkov.
We'll take a midday break to stroll through Central Park and enjoy a catered picnic lunch together beneath the trees, before returning for our second, two-hour writing session. Studies have suggested that our cognitive function begins to decline after about 4 hours of high-intensity work per day, so that's how much we'll do!
You'll leave not only with words on the page, but also with a sense of accomplishment, and new connections to a community of passionate writers.
Exact location will be sent to attendees after RSVPing. Please inform your host about any dietary restrictions, and see below for FAQs and to sample our itinerary.
Still have questions? Email [email protected].

About your facilitator:

Katya Borkov is a poet, multimedia artist and facilitator teaching interdisciplinary arts workshops as Everything Spills Studio. They have taught at The Foundry, Performance Space New York, Sapphic House and beyond, and have received support from Poets & Writers and NYSCA for their 2026 workshop series, "Written Women".

Borkov was an artist-in-residence with League of Stars (2025), and a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship Finalist (2023). She was recently granted a fellowship to the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing's 2026 Summer Writing Conference. Her poetry has been featured by Poet’s House, La Bouche, Discount Guillotine, Temptations Salon, Experimental Creations, Secret Pete’s, At The Well, and Auteurism. She has authored the photo-poetry chapbook Flamingo Heights (Tiny Cutlery Press, March 2025), which was featured in Poet’s House’s 30th Annual Showcase, as well as collage-poetry zine “V. The Vision”, and arts criticism in Impulse Magazine and AN Interior.

A professionally trained ballroom dancer, Borkov has performed as a movement artist at Spoke the Hub with BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance (2025) and in the cast of “You can hear footsteps” by Elliot Reed (2024). She has studied yoga and meditation for 7 years and brings these experiences to her practice of writing as mediumship.

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