Words on the Page: Art and Personal Writing Taster Workshop with Roe McDermott

Course Summary

How can a painting, film, song, novel, reality TV show, or video game help us tell the truth about our own lives? This taster workshop explores the relationship between art and personal writing, looking at how writers use works of art to illuminate memory, emotion, identity, relationships, embodiment and cultural experience.

We’ll examine how personal essays and memoirs use art not simply as reference or review, but as a lens through which the self becomes more visible. Participants will be encouraged to think about the artworks that have shaped them, haunted them, comforted them, or changed meaning over time.

The workshop will include a guided writing exercise using a piece of art as the starting point for personal reflection and storytelling. Suitable for all levels, and for anyone interested in criticism, memoir, essays, or discovering new ways into personal writing.

At the end of the week, participants are invited to sign up to read their work at a showcase on Friday 10th July from 5-7pm.

Roe McDermott is a writer, journalist and Fulbright scholar with an MA in Journalism, an MA in Sexuality Studies from San Francisco State University, and an MFA in Creative Writing. Roe is a columnist for The Irish Times, the film editor for Hot Press magazine, an arts critic for various publications and national radio shows and has had essays published on The Rumpus and The Coven. Roe has taught creative writing to students in secondary/high school, and at undergraduate and graduate level. In August 2020, Roe was awarded the Irish Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award for Literature and is currently working on her first essay collection which will explore PTSD, trauma, and patriarchal constructions of knowledge and credibility.

Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email bookings@irishwriterscentre.ie.