The Irish Writers Centre presents a two-hour lecture style masterclass with Mary O’Donnell.
This masterclass is part of Writers in the Regions, an in-person masterclass series hosted by the Irish Writers Centre aimed at broadening the vibrant writing communities around the country and bringing expertise and experience to writers at different stages of their writing journey.
About the Masterclass — Mary O'Donnell
I’m always very happy to share my experience with other writers or people interested in writing. One thing I realise, and that I occasionally repeat to myself when the going gets tough, is I got to do what I wanted! I got to write and publish! Some of the people attending my masterclass will be people who always dreamed, or perhaps began to dream later, about how to do the thing they really want to do: to write, perhaps, to invent, and to re-invent experience.
I’d like to share some of my ideas on the value of experience, how it is the one element in our existence that nobody can take away, no matter how you might disregard it or think it insignificant. Experience counts. It’s not like a shopping list. You can’t go out and pick it up like a packet of biscuits. It’s not to be found like that, because experience resides in each of you. Often, writers are actually mining their own experience — even if their stories seem completely ‘invented’. And they are indeed invented. But we can invent nothing without that bulwark of experience lurking there, that protects you, and your imagination.
My message will be: trust your imagination enough to invest a little time in it, in grabbing silence, in insisting on this thing, this voice, that may be pleading for you to respond in language!
Mary O’Donnell is a prolific novelist and poet. Her latest novel Sweep the Cobwebs off the Sky was just published by Époque Press UK, and her tenth poetry collection Tenderness appears with the Wake Forest University Press in September. She is a member of the artists’ affiliation Aosdána since 2001.
Tickets
This masterclass will take place at 11am on Saturday 23 May. The event will last approximately 2 hours. Admission is €28, or €25 for members of the Irish Writers Centre.
