Writing the Sea with Justine Carbery
Info
Date: July 5, 2025
Time: 10.30am - 4.30pm
Duration: 5 hours
Level: Beginner |
Cost: €100 (€90 Members)
Location: Irish Writers Centre
This course will take place in-person on Saturday 5 July 2025.
Find further information on our building access here.
Course Summary
This course is aimed at anyone who loves to write, and who loves to be by the sea. Learn how to transform your experiences of the sea into compelling stories/essays/poems. Let the sea be your guide, your setting, and your mirror and we’ll dive into salt-soaked stories, tidal emotions, and the shifting currents of memory.
Course Outline
Participants will recall experiences of the sea, and learn how to transform those memories into memorable words. We will read excerpts from fiction, non-fiction and poetry as a source of inspiration and we’ll explore how water reflects emotion, memory, and transformation through story and scene. Participants will write several times during the day and through sharing of their work will see what makes ideas lift off the page.
A suggested reading list will be recommended in advance, and participants will be encouraged to bring in a favourite piece of writing about the sea.
Course Outcomes
At the end of the course, participants will be able to mine their memories for stories, and refine their writing to bring those ideas to the page. They will understand the importance of significant detail and writing the senses.
Justine Carbery is a writer, book reviewer, yoga teacher and keen sea-swimmer. She has done travel writing for the Independent newspaper, as well as book reviews for the Sunday Independent and feature writing for national magazines. She taught Creative Writing in UCD for 10 years and regularly offers classes at the Irish Writers Centre.
