This site is a road map to the world of creative writing at UCC. The School of English offers creative writing at undergraduate, Masters and PhD level. See what we do – check out our blog written by students, see the major names in literature who visit our campus, and explore the numerous courses we offer that redefine and broaden what it is to be a 21st century creative writer.
News and Events
Another MA novel!
Congratulations to Thomas Moore (MA class 2016/17) whose American Civil War novel, A Fatal Mercy, has just been published in the US by Green Altar Books, South Carolina.
A Fatal Mercy centres around events at the battle of Gettysburg that are resurrected for the novel's hero at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the war in 1913, when 50,000 Union and Confederate veterans returned to the battlefield to remember their experiences.
Thomas wrote part of the novel during his MA and presented it for his thesis. It was subsequently long-listed for the 2017 Bridport Prize for Fiction.
MA on show at Bantry Festival
UCC's creative writing MA is taking this year's West Cork Literary Festival by storm with faculty and students, past and present, featuring prominently in the programme.
Today (Monday, July 15) ) the MA literary showcase, a regular event at the festival, highlighted the work of four current MA students, Marie Haugh, Molly Twomey, Niamh Twomey, and Beau Williams, who took time off from their theses to read and talk about their experience of the MA in a session chaired by director of creative writing, Eibhear Walshe.
Meanwhile, Eibhear will read from his recently published novel, The Trumpet Shall Sound (Somerville Press) at Bantry Bookshop at 11.30 am tomorrow (Tuesday, July 16) while MA alumn Tadhg Coakley (2015/16) will read with Mary White at Bantry Library on Wednesday, July 17, at 1pm.
For the full Bantry programme see - https://www.westcorkmusic.ie/literary-festival/
Time travel in Cork's cafés
Congratulations to MA Writing for Media student Christine Kannapel, who is the first of two students commissioned this year by the Evening Echo to write a fictional serial. Entitled "One Summer in Cork", the serial features mystery and history when an American student is transported back to Cork in the 1790s, and appears under the newspaper's "Summer Soap" banner.
The serial (in 12 episodes) has been featuring in the Echo for the past fortnight. Today is the final episode but you can binge-read the entire serial on the Evening Echo website - https://www.echolive.ie/
Primarily a poet, Christine (23) came to study at UCC having admired Leanne O'Sullivan's poetry. (Leanne leads the MA's poetry modules.) She hails from Salt Lake City, Utah. She talks about her writing process in this interview in the Echo in which she explains she did most of her writing during her year-long MA in Cork's cafés. - https://www.echolive.ie/corklives/I-do-my-writing-in-Corks-cafes-be990dd7-31c6-4805-a63d-17c4c1278fbf-ds
The Summer Soap serial project, now in its fifth year, is the product of a co-operative arrangement between the MACW's Writing for Media module, led by Mary Morrissy, and the Evening Echo, co-ordinated by Features Editor, John Dolan.
A second serial by another student from the course, Beau Williams, will run in the newspaper and on the website in August.
The experience of writing
Associate Director of Creative Writing Mary Morrissy appears in this new anthology on the process of writing from Arlen House. The Danger and the Glory: Irish Authors on the Art of Writing is a fat volume - 450 pages - crammed with essays from 61 Irish writers documenting their writing experiences and their experience of writing.
The book was edited by Dr Hedwig Schwall, director of the Leuven Centre for Irish Studies and project director of EFACIS (European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies) - - and grew out of a website - https://www.efacis.eu/- where many of these essays first appeared.
The triggering inspiration for the project was "Fiction and the Dream" an essay by John Banville, who will be a visiting professor at the School of English in the coming year. Other writers with UCC associations who appear in the volume include William Wall, Billy O'Callaghan, Danny Denton, Mary O'Donnell, Glenn Patterson and Danielle McLaughlin. The introduction is by journalist and Seamus Heaney biographer, Fintan O'Toole
The book will be celebrated at a special event hosted by the IASIL conference - http://www.iasil.org/category/conference-2019/ - at the Burke Theatre, Trinity College Dublin, @ 5.30pm on Tuesday, July 23. The Irish ambassador to Belgium, Ms Helena Nolan, who supported the project, will attend as will John Banville, Fintan O’Toole and the volume's editor, Hedwig Schwall.
The cover image is by Belfast artist Rita Duffy.