The Details of Craft: A New Look at the Writing Life with Kevin Curran

Course Summary

This writing course will take an interactive multi-media look at the writing and reading life. Thoughts and discussion on writing in a general sense will then be mixed with specific and intense discussion on reading examples of key elements that make up engaging fiction including:

• Character
• Setting
• Dialogue
• Perspective
• Voice
• Vernacular
• Scene
• Form
• Editing
• Revising

Course Outline

Through a multi-media approach, participants will first focus on writing and the general ideas behind the craft of writing. After this they will read and  discuss and examine all aspects of the craft that make up engaging writing.

Each week for three weeks we will look at two to three of the elements listed above. Participants are welcome to provide some short work to share for week two and three.

Time permitting, and dependent on the number of participants who wish to provide work, their writing will be discussed in class.

Course Outcomes

A new way of thinking about writing and thoughts on what they are doing with their own writing. From sentence to paragraph to page, participants will hopefully get an insight into how they can improve their craft.

Kevin Curran‘s third novel, Youth, was published to critical acclaim by The Lilliput Press in 2023. It was an Irish Times, Sunday Independent and RTE Culture Best Book of 2023. It was also a Colm Tóibín’s Laureate for Fiction’s Book Club choice for 2024. The paperback edition is published February 2025. He has published two other novels, Beatsploitation (2013) and Citizens (2016). As well as writing non-fiction for the Guardian and the Observer, he has also published short stories, most notably in The Stinging Fly Best of 20 year anthology and the One Dublin, One Book 2025 Best of 21st century Dublin writing anthology. For over ten years he has been teaching in his hometown in Balbriggan, Co Dublin