This autofiction workshop is for anyone fascinated by memory and by the act and art of writing itself. It will allow the participant to treat sensitive and interesting and/or quite ordinary experience with a new respect. It may also suit anyone who wishes to write about personal experience which could expose them to humiliating comments were they to write it as memoir.
What the workshop covers
This workshop will focus on the imagination of the writer and how, in autofiction, the literal ‘memory’ or series of events recalled can be reconfigured and shaped in such a way that an independent narrative appears which is neither memoir nor novel. The late John Berger used this kind of writing to write about his life, about death, time and love, in a non-linear manner, and by creating conversations with the dead.
Workshop leader
Mary O’Donnell’s work has been published in Ireland, the UK, and internationally since 1990, including poetry, four novels and three short story collections. Her eighth poetry collection Massacre of the Birds (Salmon) appeared in 2020 and has recently been translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil. Her newest publication is a limited-edition chapbook of poems, Outsiders, Always, from Southword Editions, Cork. She is a member of Ireland’s affiliation of artists, Aosdána. www.maryodonnell.com
