‘Quite simply, I know that without The Stinging Fly I would never have had a single thing published. I attended the six month workshop in 2015–2016 and it was a transformative experience. That sounds a little excessive, but it was. It changed quite profoundly the way I think about what I read, and it made me an infinitely better writer.’ —Wendy Erskine
Our workshop programme includes our annual summer school and a six-month fiction workshop, both of which are usually run in association with the Irish Writers Centre.
The principal aim of our workshop programme is to allow writers to develop their writing practice through engagement with groups of like-minded, similarly motivated individuals.
2022 Summer School
Our 2022 summer school will offer separate workshops in fiction, non-fiction and poetry, both in-person and online.
The in-person programme will run Monday to Friday, 27 June to 1 July, at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin.
The online programme will run Monday to Friday, 4 to 8 July, over Zoom.
The in-person workshops will have no more than 10 participants.
The online workshops will have no more than 6 participants in the fiction and non-fiction workshop groups. We can accommodate up to 12 participants in the poetry workshop group.
Each participating writer’s work-in-progress will be up for in-depth discussion twice over the course of the week. All the work will have been shared and read in advance. Participants are expected to attend all of the workshop sessions.
Workshop places will be offered based on work submitted. All submissions will be read by the workshop group leaders.
In-person workshops:
Fiction with Mia Gallagher
Non-fiction with Sinéad Gleeson
Poetry with Annemarie Ní Churreáin
Schedule:
10am to 4.30pm Monday to Friday
In-person workshops will take place in the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin.
Participants are responsible for organising their own travel and accommodation. In addition to the workshops, the programme will include a session with a visiting writer for each group, plus a Q&A with The Stinging Fly’s editors.
Online workshops:
Fiction with Danielle McLaughlin, Sean O’Reilly and Mary Morrissy
Non-fiction with Róisín Kiberd
Poetry with Stephen Sexton
Schedule:
10am to 1pm Monday to Friday
(Fiction with Sean O’Reilly or Mary Morrissy + Non-fiction)
4pm to 7pm Monday to Friday
(Fiction with Danielle Mclaughlin + Poetry)
Afternoon events: In addition to the workshop schedule, we will have a further strand of afternoon events from 2.30 to 3.45pm Monday to Friday for all groups.These will include close-reading seminars, plus a Q&A with the editors of The Stinging Fly. Attendance at the afternoon events is encouraged but not essential.
Fees:
In-person Workshops (27 June – 1 July)
The tuition fee for each workshop is €375.
The concession rate for anyone on low income is €250.
Online Workshops (4 July – 8 July)
The tuition fee for each workshop is €300.
The concession rate for anyone on low income is €200.
Fees are payable only when a place has been offered and you have accepted the offer. We will ask for a deposit of €100 to be paid by Friday 20 May. Fees must be paid in full by Friday 8 June.
Free Places:
Thanks to the support we receive from the Arts Council and to the continued generosity of our patrons, we are in a position to offer six free places at the summer school, three for each week. These will be awarded to writers who are either unwaged or on low income. To be considered for a free place, all you need to do is follow the general guidelines below and tick the box on the submission form.
The Stinging Fly is open to submissions from writers of all backgrounds. We are committed to pursuing a proactive approach to diversity and inclusiveness. We strongly encourage writers from underrepresented areas of society to apply. If you are such a writer, we hope you feel encouraged to join us. If you know such writers, please spread the word (with our thanks). And if you have any queries about this, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
To apply for a place:
Applications for places will be accepted via Submittable between Monday 4 April and Monday 25 April.
The application process is the same for the in-person workshops and for the online workshops.
Send us a sample of your work. We want to read 2 or 3 poems or 1,000 words of fiction/non-fiction.
All applicants must supply a cover note with details of their current writing project(s) and tell us how they believe their work will benefit from attending the summer school.
All submissions should ideally be in Word doc or docx format. Poets, please include all 3 of your poems in one document.
We will aim to send out offers of places by Wednesday 11 May. Participants will be asked to confirm their places as soon as possible.
Apply for the in-person workshops at the Irish Writers Centre here.
Apply for the online workshops here.
(If you want to apply for both an in-person workshop and an online workshop, please indicate in your cover note on the application form which of these is your first preference.)
About our tutors:
Mia Gallagher is the author of the novels HellFire (Penguin Ireland, 2006) and Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland (New Island, 2016) and the short-story collection Shift (New Island, 2018). She is a contributing editor of The Stinging Fly, and in 2018 was elected as a member of Aosdána. She has been mentoring fiction writers and facilitating workshops in creative writing since 2007.
Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. She is the editor of The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland and The Art of Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories. She is co-editor with Kim Gordon of This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music (White Rabbit, April 2022) and currently working on a novel.
Roisin Kiberd has written essays and features for the Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, Winter Papers, The White Review, The Guardian and Vice, among other places. Her first book, The Disconnect: A Personal Journey Through the Internet was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2021.
Danielle McLaughlin is the author of the short-story collection, Dinosaurs on Other Planets, and the novel, The Art of Falling, which is shortlisted for this year’s Dublin Literary Award. She has been Writer in Residence at University College Cork and Visiting Writer Fellow at the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College, Dublin. She has also designed and delivered workshops in Creative Writing for various organisations and festivals and currently mentors a number of emerging writers.
Mary Morrissy is the author of three novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender and The Rising of Bella Casey, and two collections of short stories, A Lazy Eye and Prosperity Drive. She has 20 years experience of teaching creative writing at university level in the US and Ireland. Until May 2020, she was the associate director of creative writing at University College Cork, teaching on the MA in Creative Writing and leading undergraduate teaching of creative writing. She now offers one-to-one creative mentoring and editing and appraisal services for writers.
Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht. Her publications include Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017), Town (The Salvage Press, 2018) and The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021). A recipient of The Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award and a co-recipient of The Markievicz Award, she is the 2022 Guest Editor of The Stony Thursday Book Issue 44. She lectures at the Yeats Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture, IT Sligo.
Sean O’Reilly is the author of two short-story collections, Curfew and Other Stories and Levitation, and three novels Love and Sleep, The Swing of Things and Watermark. He has led fiction workshops with The Stinging Fly since 2007 and is a member of Aosdána.
Stephen Sexton’s first book, If All the World and Love Were Young, was the winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2019. He was awarded the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2020. Cheryl’s Destinies was published in 2021, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize.
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‘The Stinging Fly’s 6-month fiction workshop is a game changer; challenging, exhilarating, and unforgettable, it completely alters the way you read and write fiction… At the end of the course I had completed a short story collection I was proud of that went on to be critically acclaimed. If I could Groundhog Day this course, I’d do it again and again for every book. Magic.’ —June Caldwell
‘I attended the Stinging Fly summer school in 2018, and I thought I knew what to expect because I’d attended a few writing workshops before this, but the Stinging Fly school was different—the discussions were more rigorous, more challenging, more frank and generous in spirit; it was joyful. The class completely changed the way I think about the fiction I read. It pushed me to investigate what I’m interested in, in my own writing, with more commitment and care.’ —Chetna Maroo
‘It is a rare privilege to be in the company of people who understand the insecurities and anxieties that arise when you are struggling to create fiction out of all the embarrassing stuff that’s inside your head. The Stinging Fly continues to create a space where writers can learn to support and champion each other’s aspirational worlds.’ —Louise Nealon
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