Author: ckfictionclinic

How Dialogue Works

/ ckfictionclinic / Leave a comment

With Claire Keegan

Clayton Whites Hotel, Wexford Town

September 27, 28 & 29, 2024.

9am to 12:30PM daily

Tuition: €380

This course is designed for those who are writing or reading fiction and have an interest in coming to a deeper understanding of how scenes and dialogue work — and why they sometimes don’t. Claire Keegan will be discussing short stories and excerpts from novels and leading you through the prose with her insights on how to write dialogue. Everyone with an interest in reading or writing fiction is most welcome to attend.

Participants will be asked to read short works by Anton Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor and Jennifer Egan. The list of specific texts will be sent out in early August. A €180 deposit and completed booking form is required to make a reservation.

Note that this course will be held on the last weekend of September, when the ‘Write by the Sea Festival’ will be running in Kilmore Quay. Participants may wish to attend the afternoon/ evening festival events there — but these bookings are entirely separate. We will post their programme of events when it is made available.

To book a place, please contact clairekeeganfictionclinic@gmail.com

Women and The City: Professor Mary McCay’s 8 Week Spring Online Course

/ ckfictionclinic / Leave a comment

March 12th – April 30th 2024

19:30 – 21:30 GMT

13:30 – 15:30 CST

Cities have an impact on the characters who inhabit them. They create the atmosphere, the culture, the societal and personal relationships, and the prejudices that have an impact on the people’s lives. Cities create an historical context and verisimilitude. They can be welcoming, freeing or dehumanising and repressive. We will examine how women live and work in cities and how cities impact their sense of self and their relationships as well as how power is distributed in those relationships. The novels examine the way women define themselves and negotiate the cities as they seek autonomy and agency. 

The Course is an 8-week Zoom course. The cities we will cover are Rome, Paris, London, Dublin, New York, Chicago, and New Orleans. 

Each student must source their own books/material for the course and have read them.

Reading List and Schedule:

Mar 12th: Introduction and Rome – Daisy Miller, Henry James (126 Pages)

Mar 19th: Paris – Sarah’s Key, Tatiana de Rosnay (294 Pages)

Mar 26th: London – Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (224 Pages)

Apr 2nd: Dublin – The Visitor, Maeve Brennan (120 Pages)

Apr 9th: New York – House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (400 Pages)

Apr 16th: New York – House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (Continued 400 Pages) – New York – so good they named it twice and has to be covered over two weeks.

Apr 23rd: Chicago – The New Me, Halle Butler (208 Pages)

Apr 30th: New Orleans: The Awakening, Kate Chopin (130 Pages)

Duration: Course will run for approximately two hours each week.

Cost: €350 Per person: Payment must please be paid in full when booking.
There are a small number of places for this course.

If you’d like to make a reservation, please contact Carmel at carmelnicanultaigh@gmail.com by close of business, 17.00 hours (5pm) GMT, on Friday 16th Feb 2024 

The relevant bank details will then be sent to you and nearer to the start date you will receive the Zoom link to join the class. Thank you.

How Fiction Works – Brisbane

/ ckfictionclinic / Leave a comment

Venue: North Lakes Hotel, 22 Lakefield Drive, North Lakes QLD 4509, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Dates: April 29, 30 & May 1 

From: 9:30am until 4pm daily 

Tuition: €700

Claire Keegan, internationally acclaimed author, invites you to join her for How Fiction Works, which will run from 9:30am to 4pm daily. These seminars will explore and demonstrate the characteristics and differences between the short story and the novel. She will discuss the structure of narrative, character, tension, point of view, dialogue, character, time and setting.

Keegan will be teaching with the stories listed below and a John McGahern novel. The course may be of particular interest to those who write or read fiction – but anyone with an interest in reading or understanding how fiction works is most welcome to attend.

The following stories will be discussed, taken from The Oxford Book of Short Stories, chosen by V.S. Pritchett.

“The Demon Lover,” by Elizabeth Bowen

“The Tent,” by Liam O’Flaherty

“My Vocation,” by Mary Lavin

“Going Home,” by William Trevor

“Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway

Also, a novel: The Barracks by John McGahern

To book a place please contact clairekeeganfictionclinic@gmail.com

Deposits and completed booking forms due in January.

 

The Stories of Anton Chekhov

/ ckfictionclinic / Leave a comment

Carmelite Community Centre, Dublin City

December 1-2, 2023 from 9:30am to 4:45pm

Tuition: 400 euros

Over the course of two full days, Claire Keegan will discuss Anton Chekhov’s stories and refer to the non-fiction texts selected below. She will consider the methods Chekhov uses in his prose-writing style, his philosophy, and the structure of his stories. These seminars will be of particular interest to those who read, write, teach or edit fiction – but anyone with an interest in reading stories is more than welcome to attend. 

Seven Stories:
The Lottery Ticket
The Trousseau
The Student
The Murder
The Wife
In the Ravine
*Betrothed
*(Title sometimes translated as The Finacee or The Bride)

Non-fiction texts:
Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey, by Janet Malcolm
“Chekhov the Subversive,” an essay by Aileen Kelly (this essay will be provided in advance, by email).

Please note that we will be using the Constance Garnett translations of the stories – which are freely available online. Participants are responsible for sourcing the Janet Malcolm biography. It is in print, costs £10, and should be available to order through your local bookstore.

These lectures may not be recorded. There is no possibility of online viewing/participation. All places are allocated on a first come, first served basis. A completed booking form and deposit are necessary to make a reservation.

To book, please contact clairekeeganfictionclinic@gmail.com

Christmas Stories for Charity

/ ckfictionclinic / Leave a comment

CHRISTMAS STORIES will be held at the Carmelite Community Centre in Dublin City on December 16, 10am to 4:30pm. The 200 euro tuition fees will be donated to Brumby Safaris Queensland for the rescuing and rehoming of neglected brumby horses. 

Claire will not be collecting fees so we will ask that you donate them directly to the foundation. Please send no money to Claire’s account to make a booking for this course. 

All bookings are made through Lorraine Decker, secretary for the foundation: brumby.safaris@gmail.com

Here is the link to the anthology Christmas Stories, edited by Jessica Harrison. Claire will be choosing some of these stories for discussion on December 16th. The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories: From Hans Christian Andersen to Angela Carter (Penguin Clothbound Classics) https://amzn.eu/d/iWCmQYF

New Course with Prof McCay: Native American Writing

/ ckfictionclinic / Leave a comment

Professor Mary McCay
Tuition: 300 Euro
Venue: Zoom
Dates: 7 March to 25 April 2022
Monday nights from 8pm to 9.30pm Irish time
 
 
In America today there are approximately 576 different Native American tribes with about 9.7 million people. In 1492 there were an estimated 112 million indigenous inhabitants of the “New World.” Of that number over 90% were killed by diseases, wars and resettlement brought about the colonizers. After the Civil War, the US Cavalry was charged with the removal of Native peoples from their lands to make way for westward expansion. After World War II there began a Renaissance in Native American writing. That period, called the First Renaissance, was followed by a second as American Native peoples, especially of the Plains and the West, continued to celebrate their identities, cultures and relations with the world around them. This course will study writers of those two Renaissances to see how Native Americans have survived and thrived, despite adversity. This course will examine writings from a number of different tribal groups, both those on reservations and those living among the “white eyes”, in order to understand the relationship between America and its first peoples.
 
Reading List
 
Vine Deloria (1933–2005)
Custer Died for Your Sins
 
N. Scott Momaday (1934–)
The Way to Rainy Mountain
 
James Welch (1940–2003)
Fools Crow
 
Leslie Marmon Silko (1948)
Ceremony
 
Joy Harbo (1951–)
Poet Warrior
 
Louise Erdrich (1954–)
Love Medicine
 
Sherman Alexi (1966–)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
 
Tony Orange (1982–)
There There
 
 

 
Mary McCay, Professor Emerita, has taught several weekend seminars in Ireland, including Southern Writers and W.B. Yeats. During the pandemic, she taught three Zoom classes to Claire Keegan’s groups: African American Voices, James Joyce, and Feminist Writings. Mary McCay was Claire Keegan’s advisor and professor during her time at Loyola University and is responsible for her introduction to and initial studies of literature.
 

New course with Prof Mary McCay: The American Short Story

/ ckfictionclinic / Leave a comment

Professor Mary McCay

Friday 26 and Saturday 27 November, 2021

Carmelite Centre, Aungier Street, Dublin 2, from 10am to 5pm

Tuition: 300 euro

To book or for more information, please email clairekeeganfictionclinic@gmail.com

The short story has been a staple of American literature since the American Revolution. Charles Brockden Brown, the first American to earn his living writing of strange phenomena and political conflict, wrote “Somnambulism” in 1805. Shortly after, Washington Irving popularized the form with “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” both of which created iconic American characters. Since then, American writers have been changing the form, testing its limits. And questioning what America really means. During this weekend, we will look at a series of short stories, examine the forms, critique the contexts, and understand the many variations of the short story in America.

Reading List

Classic American Renaissance Tales

“My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” Nathaniel Hawthorne (1832)

“Bartleby the Scrivener,” Herman Melville (1853)

The Harlem Renaissance

“Blood Burning Moon,” Jean Toomer (1923)

“Story in Harlem Slang,” Zora Neale Hurston (1942)

Money ad Manhood

“A Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” F. Scott Fitzgerald (1927)

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Ernest Hemingway (1933)

Faces of the Thirties

“Theft,” Katherine Anne Porter (1930)

“Here We Are,” Dorothy Parker (1931)

African American Writing and Civil Rights

“Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin (1957)

“Everyday Use,” Alice Walker (1973)

New American Classics

“Where I’m Calling From,” Raymond Carver (1983)

“Brokeback Mountain,” Annie Proulx (1997)

Mary McCay, Professor Emerita, has taught several weekend seminars in Ireland, including Southern Writers and W.B. Yeats. During the pandemic, she taught three Zoom classes to Claire Keegan’s groups: African American Voices, James Joyce, and Feminist Writings. Mary McCay was Claire Keegan’s advisor and professor during her time at Loyola University and is responsible for her introduction to and initial studies of literature. She is vaccinated and will be in Ireland in November to meet with students interested in the American Short Story.

Upcoming Courses and Workshops

/ ckfictionclinic / Leave a comment
Photo by Green Chameleo

Claire Keegan’s January 2022 residential writing course in Tullow, as well as her September 2021 workshop on the short “Loss and the Short Story”, are now fully booked! However, writers and readers are welcome to get in contact with Monica at ClaireKeeganFictionClinic@gmail.com to place their names on the waiting list.

Due to a cancellation, one space has become available in the August 2021 “The Short Story and the Novel” workshop. If you would like to book a spot, please get in contact!