Writing Autofiction with Órfhlaith Foyle

Course Summary

This course is aimed at those who believe they have a story, a particular story in them; one that uses their own experience, yet enhanced by their imaginations.

This course will explore what autofiction is, how to write it, how to experiment with the writer’s own experience and turn it into a story.  How does auto fiction sit with memoir, the memoir/novel, autobiography. How does the writer employ psychic distance yet create a compelling ‘other version of themselves’ as character?

Course Outline

Participants will focus on how to step apart from their lives and transform it into fiction, via reading and taking inspiration from writers including Rachel Cusk, James Baldwin, Vivian Gornick, Colette, Margurite Duras, Sherman Alexi, Jean Rhys, J M Coetzee, Fatima Dass.

There will be ‘homework’ such as journal writing/ mining specific memories and reading the work of auto fictional authors.

Participants will write auto fictional pieces within each workshop and benefit from individual feedback.

Week 1

What is autofiction? How does it differ from other forms aka memoir/autobiography and creative non-fiction. What is memory and how does it form? Is it even real? How our brains need fiction to make sense of our lives.

Week 2

Journal Writing. The moments overlooked. Sight, sound and smell. Auto fictional Voice and Character. Fictionalising yourself. Making art inspired by your own life.

Week 3

Permission to write.  What is worthy to write. Who gets to tell the story? Your research skills and imagination.

Turning a personal account into a fictional story. Fictionalising others.

Week 4

Structure and outline. Setting, Tone, Plot, Pace, Rhythm –Dialogue and Narrative.

Deciding what you will write and how to write it.

Week 5

Continuing from week 4. Empasis on developing relationships between main character and other characters.  Keeping true to the story line.

Week 6

Previous weeks’ recap. Participants are invited to read their work and to consider their writing future. Where do they want their work seen and read etc?

Course Outcomes

Participants will have written autofiction based primarily on their life experiences, transforming memories into fictional truth. This six-week workshop will equip them with the imaginative and creative writing techniques to write autofiction.

There is potential for follow on one-to-one mentorship after course completion.

Órfhlaith Foyle is a short story writer, poet and dramatist and lives in Galway.

Doire Press published her third collection of short stories Three Houses in Rome September 2023.

Her work has appeared in the London Magazine, The Dublin Review, Wales Arts Review, The Manchester Review, The Stinging Fly, the Gorse journal and various anthologies. She wrote and directed the radio dramas May’s End and How I Murdered Lucrezia. Both received full BAI funding and premiered on Newstalk Radio in October 2021 and 2023.

Her fourth short story collection PLACES is to be published by Doire Press Autumn 2026

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