PHOTOGRAPH BY ÓRFHLAITH FOYLE
The Faber Academy is coming to Dublin in April next year. Gerard Donovan and Claire Keegan will teach a course called 'The Art of the Short Story' at Newman House on Thursday 16 to Sunday 19 April 2009.
The blurb rather cryptically states: 'How to Create More Room Using Less Space: How to create more room in a small apartment? Make the walls into mirrors, get rid of half the furniture, and render yourself invisible.' I mean, I know what they are getting at, but why be so weirdly obscure? Anyhow...
The course costs a pretty €630, is set over four days and the teachers will 'explore how to transform everyday experience from statements into suggestion that is both intellectually and emotionally significant. Using discussions and exercises, the workshops will address the elements of the form - among them setting, characters, time, structure and how fiction forms a temporal arc - while pondering how short story writers use detail, and the lack of it, to cast the spell of that single effect.'
Claire is a great teacher, I know from experience, and Gerard is a fine writer, so all in all I'm sure it will be a fabulous few days. Expect to learn loads.
See the Faber site here for more.
5 comments:
And I would love to go, but where would I find that kind of money... *sob, sob*
I know, it's mad money, isn't it? I'd like to go too but no way at that price.
I wonder just who WILL turn up at those prices? 2 good names for sure - I liked some of Donovan's latest collection, but it was patchy. Keegan really is the business - and you say she's an excellent teacher too? A workshop with her would be great so - but that's just too much moolah :-(
She is an excellent teacher; very straightforward and to the point and organised.
But, God, there's no way I can afford to go, much as I'd like to. Only the rich kids will be there...sob, sob...
They are good names but the money is way way too high for me. You can get a terrific residential week at the Arvon for less. There's no selection criteria and the make up of the group is almost as important as the calibre of the teachers.
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