Novel Getting Started

Director:                     Catherine Dunne

Biog:                          

Catherine Dunne is a prize-winning author of nine novels including The Walled Garden,  Something like Love, At a Time Like This, Set in Stone, Missing Julia, and  the most recent is The Things We Know Now.  She has also published one work of non-fiction: a social history of Irish immigrants in London, called An Unconsidered People.  Her work has been translated into several languages.

Catherine was awarded the International Prize at the Vigevano Literary Festival inItalyin 2006, and has been shortlisted for, among others, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Italian Booksellers’ Award.

She has facilitated Creative Writing Workshops for Listowel Writers’ Week, The Seanchaí Literary & Cultural Centre Listowel, Dublin City Council, The Irish Writers’ Centre and the Arvon Foundation in theUK. She lives inDublin.

Course Theme:         

“Finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole, in almost total solitude, and discovering that only writing can save you. To be without the slightest subject for a book, the slightest idea for a book, is to find yourself, once again, before a book.”*
(*Marguerite Duras, Writing (Cambridge, MA: Lumen Editions, 1993)

Maybe this is the stage you are at right now.  Or perhaps you already have your subject: your characters roam around inside your head, you are brimming with ideas, or indeed, perhaps you have started and not finished so many times that you are now losing hope. 

This course will help you to come to grips with the ungainly beast that is the novel.  We will look at ways to devise characters that live and breathe; at ways to structure a plot; at the tools needed to keep you going. 

We will focus on the writing process – and on enjoying the creative journey that lies ahead.

Students are requested to submit an excerpt, 3000 words max. to eilish@writersweek.ie by the 20th April 2013.

How to Book a Workshop

Each three-day Workshop will run from 9.00am – 12.30pm on:

Thursday 30th May, Friday 31st  May and Saturday 1st  June 2013.

Places are limited to 15 per workshop.

Workshop Fee:    €175.00 for each three-day workshop 

Bookings are now being taken:

By Phone:                   +353 (0)68 21074

By Post:                      

Cheque / Postal Order [Ireland Only] –Payable to Listowel Writers’ Week Ltd.

In Person:

Call into Listowel Writers’ Week Festival Office,
24 The Square, Listowel, Co Kerry, Ireland.

Office Hours               10.00am – 5.00pm Monday to Friday.

Credit/Debit Card –    Please call Tel: +353 (0) 68-21074

Please Note: Credit Card bookings are subject to a booking fee of €4 per transaction and Debit Card €2 per transaction. There is NO booking fee for Irish Cheque or Irish Postal Order purchases.

Workshop refunds will NOT be permitted after the 1st April 2013.