Non-Fiction Masterclass with Carlo Gébler

Course Summary

Carlo Gébler has written a number of works of non-fiction – including ‘The Siege of Derry’ (narrative history), ‘Father & I’ & ‘Confessions of a Catastrophist (memoir), ‘The Projectionist; the story of Ernest Gébler (biography) and ‘A Cold Eye; Notes from a Shared Island 1989 – 2024’ (a journal-based work). He is currently working of ‘The Emerald Coast’, a narrative non-fiction work about his experience of death and ‘Drewsborough’ a history-come-memoir about his maternal Co. Clare grandparents. Although all these titles vary in style and technique they are all connected in one way; they all derive from archive. The creation of a personal archive from which the writer is able to derive content, and how to derive that content, will be the subject of this masterclass.

Course Outline

This is a ninety-minute masterclass. Its focus will be on the personal archive which Carlo Gebler will explore with reference to his books. Other texts will also be cited. No preparation is required nor will participants be expected to produce any work.

Course Outcomes

The purpose of the class is to enable participants to think about how they might create and utilize their own self-made archive for literary purposes.

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, and HMP Hydebank. He is a member of Aosdána.

Photograph of Carlo Gébler by David Barker.