How Narrative Works with Carlo Gebler
Info
Date: March 10, 2026
Time: 1.15 pm - 2.15 pm
Duration: 4 weeks
Level: Advanced | Intermediate | Beginner |
Cost: €160 (€144 Members)
Location: Irish Writers Centre
This course will take place in person at the Irish Writers Centre on Tuesdays for 4 weeks (4 sessions total.)
Course Summary
Carlo Gébler has written a number of novels, most recently The Innocent of Falkland Road and I, Antigone. He has also written short fiction, children’s fiction and works for the theatre. The way that story works is essential to all these different forms. In each hour-long session at the Irish Writers’ Centre, Carlo Gébler will read aloud a short story (a classic, from the canon) and then explain how, in his opinion, it works. A different aspect of narrative will be explored each week.
Course Outline
In Week One, Carlo Gébler will look at the oral (stories told inside a narrative by one character to another); in Week Two, the first person; in Week Three, the omniscient narrator; and in Week Four he will discuss either the use of protocol in narrative (the appropriation of an existing form such as the letter in order to carry a story) or the deployment of white space and omission in narrative in order to make a story work.
Because participants need do nothing but turn up and listen, the titles to be analysed each week are not listed but the authors can be: Week One, Jorge Luis Borges; Week Two, Varlam Shalamov, Week Three, Katherine Mansfield, Week Four, Elizabeth Bowen or Isaac Babel. The choice of the Week Four author will be made in Week Three. Participants will not be expected to produce work and Carlo Gébler cannot undertake to look at the participants’ work either.
Course Outcomes
The purpose of the class is to enable participants to identify the best narrative strategy for the stories they want to tell.
Carlo Gébler was born in Dublin in 1954 and lives outside Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. He is a writer, novelist and occasional broadcaster, most recently Escape from the Maze, a ten-part series for BBC R4 about the 1983 IRA escape from the Maze Prison, which he wrote and presented. His memoir A Cold Eye: Notes from a Shared Island 1989 – 2024 was published in September 2024. He teaches at the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing at Trinity College, Dublin, HMP Hydebank and Loughan House Open Prison. He is a member of Aosdána.
Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email info@irishwriterscentre.ie.
