The Lady’s Editorial Residency — October Edition Motovun, Croatia
The Lady’s Editorial Residency
Motovun, Croatia · October 22–25, 2026
“Every harvest begins long before autumn.”
By October, Motovun slows down. The vineyards are heavy with grapes. The olive harvest begins.The mornings smell of wood smoke and damp earth. The tourists have gone home, and the hill belongs to the people who actually live there.
It’s our favourite time of year.
And the only time we host our Editorial Residency.
Four days to think, write and create something that lasts.
A temporary home for women who are in the middle of something— building, questioning, changing, letting go, beginning again—and who believe that writing, conversation and collective intelligence can help us understand what comes next.
Last spring, we tried something we’d never done before.
Ten women arrived in Motovun carrying notebooks, unfinished ideas and questions they couldn’t quite answer on their own.
Together, they became our first Editorial Collective.
Over four days, they shared stories, challenged each other’s thinking, wrote essays, interviewed one another and helped shape what has now become the very first issue of The Lady’s Realm Journal.
The publication you’re reading today exists because of those conversations.
This October, we begin again.
With a new question.
A new Editorial Collective.
And a blank first page.
This Autumn’s Editorial Theme
What do we leave behind?
Not only for ourselves.
But for the women who come after us.
Every Editorial Residency begins with one question.
Everything else emerges from the women in the room.
What happens during the Residency?
We write and we dance.
We laugh and we cry.
We wander through old cobbled streets.
We cook together. Drink wine. Sit around long tables.
We collect stories, challenge ideas and make one another’s work stronger.
We make space for each woman to belong as she is. And somewhere between the conversations, the silence, the laughter and the late nights, something shifts.
By the end of the weekend, something exists that didn’t before.
Not only a publication.
A different version of ourselves.
What women have said
“It was intense and light at the same time. Deep, but also a wonderful space for reflection and new perspectives.”
“It is a sanctuary where women stop performing. They are themselves: raw, braless and ready to accept you as you are, with your deepest, darkest secrets and everything that comes with being your true self.”
“I felt like I was among friends, heroes and stars.”
Who is this for?
Not women with perfect answers.
Women with honest questions.
She’s probably successful enough to know that external success doesn’t automatically create inner clarity.
She has outgrown parts of her career, her identity or the way work works.
She values depth over networking.
Curiosity over certainty.
Conversation over performance.
She wants to create something meaningful alongside remarkable women.
What you’ll leave with
I can’t tell you exactly what will happen over those four days.
That depends on who is in the room, what each woman brings and what we are ready to say once we stop performing.
What I can tell you is that you’ll spend four days with women who ask better questions—and who are brave enough to be asked them too.
You’ll sit around the terrace table. You’ll talk honestly. You’ll laugh a lot. You’ll hear stories from women whose lives, countries and experiences may look nothing like yours—and still recognise yourself somewhere inside them.
One woman told us the residency became a place she returns to in her mind whenever life starts to feel “off”: a reminder of what it feels like to be fully herself.
Another described it as a break, a breath of the life she wants, infused with other women’s dreams.
That’s what I hope the four days give you.
Not a new version of yourself.
A chance to come back to the one who was already there.
Join the waitlist
We’re opening the waitlist before announcing publicly.
The Residency is limited to 15 women.
If this feels like the room you’ve been looking for, we’d love to hear from you.
We’ll personally send you the programme, investment details and everything you need to decide.
With love,
Dina & Fransje
Co-founders, The Lady’s Realm