IT was while she was on holiday in Italy that Glynis Charlton discovered the island.

Isola Maggiore is on Lake Trasimeno, Italy's fourth largest lake, famed for its breathtaking sunsets. With no cars on the island, and a population of just 17, it's a remote, peaceful place tucked away in central Italy. Glynis couldn't get it out of her head.

"I discovered it by chance during a visit to Perugia in Umbria, the next province from Tuscany, eight years ago," she says. "I was staying on the shore and a local recommended going across to the island by ferry. I knew nothing about it but fell in love with it. It's a very quiet place, there are no cars and hardly any people.

"There was just something special about it. When I left, it felt like it was calling to me."

Two months later Glynis, of Bingley, returned to the island and has been going back ever since. Now she has finally realised her dream of running a writing retreat there.

“It felt like the perfect location,” she says. “I’m passionate about writing and Italy so it made sense to put it all together.”

The project came about when Glynis returned to the island and was exploring with a friend. "I kept picking up business cards from a retired Belgian psychiatrist," she says. "He'd lived there over 20 years, I felt I had to get in touch. He invited me to his house and introduced me to the island's only hotel. The idea of a writers retreat snowballed from there."

The next retreat runs from May 18 - 24. Guests stay in the island's hotel and spend their days in writing workshops. There's also chance to explore the island on guided walks.

“It's a rare chance for writers to immerse themselves in the tranquility of the place and take time to think and be creative,” says Glynis. “When the last ferry leaves in the evening there’s just you, 17 islanders and the local cats!”

Glynis launched the retreat last September. An established writer, she has run creative writing workshops for several years at venues including Haworth's Bronte Parsonage Museum and the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and events such as Ilkley Literature Festival. She has a first class degree in creative writing, has twice been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and has contributed to resource books on therapeutic writing.

Although she enjoyed creative writing as a child, Glynis didn't put pen to paper for quite a while after leaving school.

"I got married young and didn't write for 20 years. Then, after I got divorced, I submitted a short story and got onto an Arts Council project seeking new Yorkshire writing. I enrolled for a creating writing degree and, six years of Monday nights later, at the age of 46, I emerged with a First," says Glynis, who is currently working on a crime novel. "Now I can't imagine a day without writing. I enjoy poetry but prose is my first love. I especially enjoy creating characters then seeing what they get up to."

She gave up her day job, as a project co-ordinator in arts and mental health services, to set up writing workshops. Now her aim is to run several retreats a year at Isola Maggiore.

"I don't have more than six or eight people at a time on the retreats. It's the peace and stillness that people like," she says. "I think of it like a snowglobe; once you step onto the island's shore everything settles down, like a snowglobe does when you stop shaking it. You can feel your shoulders dropping.

"Writing is a solitary activity, the quiet and calm helps you focus. People sit with a notebook on their laps, gazing out to the lake. You can walk through olive groves and see wild pheasants. As a writer, you're always looking for the perfect place to write. I've found mine."

Originally a fishing community, the island is said to have been home to Saint Francis of Assisi for 40 days in 1211. Over the centuries the population declined and today it's a tiny village, dominated by the ruins of a Fransiscan monastery.

"None of the locals speak English - I went to Italian conversation night classes then signed up at Leeds Beckett University to learn the language properly," says Glynis. "The retreat is based at a small rustic hotel which services delicious food and local wines. A stone's throw away is a three-storey medieval building, an old priest's house, which I have permission to use for workshops."

The retreat includes five morning workshops and two one-to-one sessions, and tours of the island and its lace museum.

"Two ladies from Perugia hold Italian conversation classes, included in the retreat," says Glynis. "Or people can just write. It's flexible. It's all about being relaxed and inspired."

A seven-day retreat on Isola Maggiore is £650, including bed, breakfast and evening meal. The cost doesn't include flights or travel to the island. Flights leave Leeds Bradford Airport to Pisa and Rome.

Writers attending this year's retreats are invited to write about their stay on Isola Maggiore and, if published, they have a chance of winning a free week on the island in 2017.