Faber & Faber

Thursday 25 to Sunday 28 March 2010
10am-5pm daily

The St. Stephen’s Green Hibernian Club, Dublin 2

Course fees: £500 (includes VAT)

Set over four days in the heart of literary Dublin, this course will establish essential principles of short story writing, among them plot, character, description and setting, with additional reference both to the Chekhov model of ‘the writer as witness’ and to the role that autobiography plays in fiction. Selected reading and writing activities will provide practical examples and enable participants to reflect on how these principles can lay the foundation for successful stories.

The course will be directed by Gerard Donovan with guest seminars by Dermot Bolger and Carlo Gébler.

The course includes:

•    4 days' intensive tuition by Gerard Donovan, encompassing 1 day of teaching by guest tutors, Dermot Bolger and Carlo Gébler (10am-5pm)
•    A complimentary Moleskine® Notebook
•    A daily artisan lunch
•    Regular coffee breaks
•    A handy course pack including Dublin recommendations
•    A special discount off Faber books purchased at www.faber.co.uk

About the Tutors

Gerard Donovan is the author of the novels Schopenhauer’s Telescope, which won the 2004 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, Doctor Salt and, most recently, Julius Winsome, described in the Irish Times as ‘a timeless fable of loss, isolation and violence.’ He is also the author of a stunning and elegiac collection of stories, Country of the Grand.

Dermot Bolger is one of Ireland’s best known writers, His nine novels include The Journey Home, Father’s Music, Temptation, The Valparaiso Voyage and most recently The Family on Paradise Pier. His debut play, The Lament for Arthur Cleary received The Samuel Beckett Award and collections of his plays have appeared from Penguin and Faber. The author a eight volumes of poetry, he devised the best-selling collaborative novels, Finbar’s Hotel and Ladies Night at Finbar’s Hotel and has edited many anthologies, including The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction.

Carlo Gébler was born in Dublin in 1954. He is the author of novels including The Cure (1994) and How to Murder a Man (1998), the short story collection W.9. & Other Lives (1996), the memoir Father & I (2000), the narrative history The Siege of Derry (2005), and two travel books, Driving Through Cuba (1988) and The Glass Curtain (1991), as well as several plays for both radio and stage, including 10 Rounds, which was short listed for the Ewart-Biggs Prize (2002). He has also written for children and reviews widely. In 2008 the Lagan Press published his novel, A Good Day for a Dog and Fourth Estate the memoir, My Father’s Watch, co-written with Patrick Maguire, youngest of the Maguire Seven. He has taught at Trinity College, Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast (where he is the current Royal Literary Fund Fellow), and HMP Maghaberry where he has been writer-in-residence since 1997.  He was elected to Aosdána in 1990 and was chairman of the Irish Writers’ Centre until January 2009. He is, finally, an occasional broadcaster and director of network television documentaries. His film Put to the Test won the 1999 Royal Television Society award. He is married, with five children.

About Faber

Faber and Faber is the last of the great independent publishing houses in London. We were established in 1929 by Geoffrey Faber and our first editor was T. S. Eliot. Among our list of authors we are proud to publish five Booker Prize winners and eleven Nobel Laureates. We are particularly well-known for our unrivalled list of modern poets and playwrights, as well as for publishing writers of prize-winning fiction and general non-fiction. More


To make a booking:

Contact Patrick on either patrickk@faber.co.uk or +44 (0) 20 7927 3822.

Alternatively, write to Patrick Keogh, Faber and Faber, 74-77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA.

Places are strictly limited, so book soon to avoid disappointment.