‘Fusing creativity and craft to nurture the writer within.’
Established in 2016, the Kildare Writing Centre provides courses in creative writing in comfortable surroundings with small class sizes.
The Centre is offering three types of courses.
- A course in creative writing focusing on writing short stories, this course is designed to suit all levels and runs over ten weeks.
- Secondly, the centre offers a course for emerging writers where writing is workshopped by peers with an input from the facilitator, this course will be offered in five-week installments.
- At least once a term the centre will offer a weekend course in novel writing covering some of the main elements involved.
Dates for next courses
1. Ten Week Course in creative writing focusing on the short story:
Starts Monday, February 4th and runs for ten Mondays to April 15th. There will be no class on Monday, March 18th. Times and details of this course are below.
2. Five-week workshops for emerging writers.
Wednesday, Jan. 16th to Wednesday, February 13th
3. Weekend Course on Starting the novel:
Saturday, March 9th, 2019 and Sunday, March 10th, 2019.
Times & Location
Ten-week course: Classes run from 7pm – 10pm with a break of fifteen minutes for refreshments (supplied).
Five-week course: Workshops run from 7pm-9pm (no break)
Weekend courses: Saturday 10am – 4pm with a morning break 11.30am -11.45am. Lunch 1pm-2pm. (both provided)
Sunday 10am – 1pm with a morning break 11.30am-11.45am. (Refreshments provided)
Accommodation is not provided for these courses but there are B&B’s, Inns and hotels in the vicinity.
Location:
23 Millford, Athgarvan, Newbridge, W12 YT51 Co. Kildare
Class sizes for all courses: Places are limited to eight.
Class content for the ten-week course:
Week one: Introduction: Getting started and openings.
Week Two: Characters: How to make them seem real.
Week Three: Plot: Beginning, middle, and end.
Week four: Point of view: Who tells the story?
Week Five: Setting: Exploring ways of using time and place.
Week six: Dialogue: Where there are people, there is talk.
Week seven: Description: Using the senses to bring your story to life.
Week eight: Voice/Style: Discovering your natural, narrative voice.
Week nine: Theme: What’s it all about…really?
Week ten: The writing life: Getting down to the nitty-gritty daily routines of writing and revision.
Class content for the weekend courses:
Saturday 10am-1pm: An introduction and exploration of the practice of creative writing paying particular attention to the novel form. Looking at how and where to begin a novel. Examining the work of established writers to demonstrate what is best practice.
Saturday 2pm-4pm: An opportunity for the student to write and share, followed by a detailed examination of characterisation, and how as a successful writer you can present fictive people in a way that makes them seem real.
Sunday 10am-1pm. A brief overview of the other major elements of a novel and what it is you need to kick-start your writing life.
Class content for the Emerging Writers workshops:
The focus of these workshops will be a close examination of individual manuscripts each week with time allowed for a short period of free-writing followed by a discussion on issues that arise from the workshopping and the free-writing. The lessons will also look at editing your own work and getting your manuscript ready for sending out to potential publishers including looking at writing a novel synopsis and a cover letter.
Cost and registration
Fees:
- Cost for the ten-week courses is €300. A deposit of €30 is required to secure a place. The remainder €270 will be due in full on the first night. Refunds will only be available if the centre cancels a lesson.
- Cost for the five-week course is €100. A deposit of €30 is required to secure a place. The remainder €70 is due in full on the first night.
- The cost for the weekend courses is €85. You can pay a deposit of €30 and the remaining €55 will be due on the first day of the weekend.
You can pay the deposit through PayPal below. Cheques or postal orders made out to Pauline Clooney can be posted to the location address.
Option to pay the deposit with Paypal. Please specify in a follow-up email which course you are signing up to:
Testimonials: Click on the link.
Contact details
paulineclooney11@gmail.com, Phone. 087 6347377 or 045 442324
or via Facebook page: http://fb.me/kildarewritingcentre
Director: Pauline Clooney
Pauline Clooney grew up in the Midlands. She is a retired second level English, History, and Creative Writing teacher. She holds an M.Litt on Charlotte Brontë from NUI Maynooth(2006), a 1st Class Honours Certificate in Creative Writing for Publication from NUI Maynooth (2013) and a 1st Class Honours MA in Creative Writing from UCD(2015). She has completed her debut novel and awaits offers to publish.
She has organised the literary event as part of the Newbridge festival of Culture, June Fest since 2013 and its predecessor in the 1990s, Bealtaine.
She has given workshops on creative writing as part of the laois Bealtaine Festival:
and the Laois Connects Mental Health Awareness week:
https://www.arthouse.ie/unlocking-the-creative-self-with-writer-pauline-clooney/
Pauline also gave a free workshop on creative writing as part of the 2018 June Fest in Newbridge.
Pauline has had her stories anthologised and shortlisted for the RTE Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story competition and the Doolin Short Story competition in 2014. She has been longlisted for the inaugural Colm Tóibín Short Story Competition (2016), the Fish Short Memoir competition (2014) and the Fish Short Story Prize (2015 and 2018) and was placed second in the Doolin Short Story competition (2015). She has been shortlisted on three occasions for the Hennessey New Irish Writing in association with the Irish Times.
She won the RTE Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story competition in 2015:
https://stillslibrary.rte.ie/indexplus/image/5713/087.html
