Info

Date: October 17, 2023

Time: 6.30 pm - 8.30 pm

Duration: 6 weeks

Level: Emerging |

Cost: €165 (€150 Members)

Location: Irish Writers Centre

This course will take place on Tuesdays (six sessions in total).

Course Summary

Each two hour session will comprise of two elements: close reading of short stories and feedback on individual work.


Course Outline

Week One: Form and genre: James Joyce, Lydia Davis.

Week Two: Reality: Tobias Wolff, Wendy Erskine.

Week Three: Fantasy: Jorge Luis Borges, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.

Week Four: Voice and character: Miranda July, Donald Barthelme.

Week Five: Plot and dialogue: Franz Kafka, Maggie Armstrong.

Week Six: Structure and time: Grace Paley, Italo Calvino.


Course Outcomes

At the end of this course, people will return to their writing with inspiration and a deeper understanding of the art of the short story.


Cathy Sweeney’s critically acclaimed collection of short stories, Modern Times, was published by The Stinging Fly Press and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2020. Cathy was awarded a Literature Bursary from The Arts Council of Ireland in 2020 and 2023 and she was Writer-in-Residence at University College Cork in 2022. She is the recipient of a Hawthornden Foundation Fellowship. Her debut novel Breakdown is forthcoming with Weidenfeld & Nicolson in January 2024.