This workshop in creative writing is designed to encourage English majors’ and Irish Studies minors’ engagement with Irish literature through practice, the exercise of creative ideation, and to develop students’ deeper understanding and appreciation of historical and contemporary Irish literary texts through artistic expression.

Students will read and workshop their ideas about Irish and Irish-American-authored texts in class, which they will then build upon in weekly creative writings tasks. These projects will range from flash fiction to poetry, songwriting to scriptwriting and comic book-writing, which they will also share with each other in class and develop into a writing portfolio.

Unique to the Sacred Heart in Dingle campus, participants of this creative writing workshop will attend a number of readings by local/contemporary authors (who write both in English and Irish) and present their own work in two open mic nights alongside local practitioners. Students will develop an ongoing dialogue on Irish, Irish-American, and outsider identity, through the sharing of their writing and ideas. They will enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore and expand the Irish literary tradition from inside the Dingle literary arts scene.