ONE DAY SHORT FICTION COURSE AT THE IWC

My course at Penfest in Carlow tomorrow is full, but I am teaching a one-day short fiction course at the Irish Writers' Centre in Dublin on the 12th of October, for all you story lovers. 10.30am-4.30pm, €80 / €70 (members). We will discuss, read, workshop, write.

See here for bookings and more.

FLASH FICTION COURSE - BIG SMOKE WRITING FACTORY

I'm teaching a one day Flash Fiction course at the Big Smoke Writing Factory in Dublin on Saturday May 11th.

Time: 10am to 4pm.

Fee: €75.

More and booking here.

BIG SMOKE WRITING FACTORY

If in 2010 you want to brush up your writing skills, or meet fellow writers, or get serious with your writing, you could stop by Dublin's Big Smoke Writing Factory for a course. They run them evenings, afternoons and Saturdays, so there should be a time slot to please all-comers.

Some of the new 12 week courses - costing €280 - that caught my eye included:

Novel In Progress
MONDAY, 6.30pm-8.30pm, starting February 1, 2010.

Demystifying Poetry
TUESDAY, 6.30pm-8.30pm, starting February 2, 2010.

Angst & Adventure (children's and young adult fiction)
WEDNESDAY, 7pm-9pm, starting January 27, 2010.

Writing Short Stories
SATURDAY, 1pm-3pm, starting February 6, 2010.

The Developing Poet
SATURDAY, 3pm-5.15pm, starting January 16, 2010.


More about course leaders and cetera at the Smoke's website here.

FABER ACADEMY IN DUBLIN

PHOTOGRAPH BY ÓRFHLAITH FOYLE


The Faber Academy is coming to Dublin in April next year. Gerard Donovan and Claire Keegan will teach a course called 'The Art of the Short Story' at Newman House on Thursday 16 to Sunday 19 April 2009.

The blurb rather cryptically states: 'How to Create More Room Using Less Space: How to create more room in a small apartment? Make the walls into mirrors, get rid of half the furniture, and render yourself invisible.' I mean, I know what they are getting at, but why be so weirdly obscure? Anyhow...

The course costs a pretty €630, is set over four days and the teachers will 'explore how to transform everyday experience from statements into suggestion that is both intellectually and emotionally significant. Using discussions and exercises, the workshops will address the elements of the form - among them setting, characters, time, structure and how fiction forms a temporal arc - while pondering how short story writers use detail, and the lack of it, to cast the spell of that single effect.'

Claire is a great teacher, I know from experience, and Gerard is a fine writer, so all in all I'm sure it will be a fabulous few days. Expect to learn loads.

See the Faber site here for more.