Writing Your First-Person (Personal) Essay with Aíne Greaney

Course Summary

Whether you’re a beginner writer or venturing into a new creative genre, this course will help you to understand the personal essay form, its conventions and how to get writing. We will brainstorm possible essay topics and, amid all the stories from your life, to write about the one that’s calling to you now, in 2024. The course also covers editing and how to research publications to find your essay’s best home.

Course Outline

• Definition of the modern essay and how that definition influences your writing approach and style
• Generating ideas for your essay
• Why are you writing this now?
• Finding a way ‘in’ – The opening scene, narrative distance and narrative voice
• More than a story: Deriving meaning from the life experience you write about
• Writing lively scenes; making your readers care about your story
• What or who should you not write about? And how to make that decision.
• Editing your personal essay drafts
• Publishing tips and guidelines

Course Outcomes

A knowledge of the modern essay form and sub-forms. Plus gain and practice the skills and confidence to get started on the first draft of a personal essay.

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

Áine Greaney’s essays have appeared or been cited in publications such as Best American Essays, Books Ireland, The Boston Globe Magazine, New Hibernia Review; Irish Times Generation Emigration, Tendon (Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine), and Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. A trained teacher, Greaney holds a bachelor’s in education (NUI) and a master’s in English.

Past teaching venues include The Irish Writers Center; Seattle Children’s Hospital; The Writers Digest Conference; New Hampshire Writers Project Annual Conference; Gloucester Writers Center and the Carver School of Medicine.