Could you do with some support – including an opportunity to learn from creative and academic writers (including Donal Ryan, Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, Rowena Murray, Kit de Waal, Eoin Devereux, Cat Hogan and more), meet with other writers and receive online support?
If this is of interest to you, we are delighted to invite applications for our month-long writing support programme: UL’s ‘Mayday’ writing support series.
Successful applicants will attend two face-to-face workshops at the beginning and end of the month (Saturday May 4th and Friday May 31st) and daily online check-ins to support and progress writing. Successful applicants will be offered this programme completely free (but will be invited to make a donation of a maximum of €50 to help fund future programmes).
For more details please click F.A.Q.s in the menu above.
Project Partners
Meet the team
Professor Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
Project Lead
Professor Sarah Moore (Fitzgerald) is an award winning teacher, researcher and novelist at the University of Limerick where she teaches creative writing. She was awarded a full professorship at UL in 2016 for her research and leadership in teaching and learning, and was Ireland’s inaugural chair of the board of the National Forum for the enhancement of teaching and learning. She’s currently course director for the full and part time MAs in creative writing at UL, and is founder of UL’s Creative Writing Winter School and Spring Retreats for mid-career writers. Sarah's fiction for children and young adults has won/been shortlisted for several literary prizes including the Jack Harte Bursary, The Waterstones' Prize for Children's Literature and The Irish Book Awards. Her creative work has been adapted for the stage and translated into over twenty different languages. In 2022 Sarah won the London Magazine's award for short fiction. Her academic research includes a focus on the writing process and how creative and academic writers go about the complex, often challenging task of putting their work on paper.
Dr. Christina Morin
Project Lead
Tina is an Associate Professor of English and Asst. Dean of Research at U.L. where she supports, encourages and amplifies Arts, Humanities, and Social Science research at the university. Author of numerous publications, her research specialisms include Irish gothic literature, eighteenth-century Irish print culture and book history, and Irish women's writing. She was recently awarded an IRC Research Ally Prize. Tina has recently completed a visiting research fellowship jointly supported by Trinity College Dublin and Cambridge University Library.
Professor Eoin Devereux
Project Advisor
With expertise in popular music and media, Professor Eoin Devereux is a Cultural Sociologist and Creative Writer who teaches at the University of Limerick. His creative writing has been published by The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland and broadcast by RTÉ Radio. His poem "Revolutions" was curated as part of the Centenary of Commemorations Poetry Jukebox in 2023. Eoin collaborates with Gavin Friday to co-write and co-perform The Cedarwood Chronicles for the U2 radio station U2X. He is also an experimental musician who records as the duo Dopamine Fix.
Elaine Kiely
Research Assistant
Elaine is a poet and writer who recently graduated with an M.A. in Creative Writing from U.L. She will facilitate the programme's daily online writing sessions and create a supportive and collaborative writing environment for participants.
MASTERCLASS LEADERS
Kit de Waal
Kit de Waal, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, was brought up among the Irish community of Birmingham in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. In 2022 it was adapted for television by the BBC. Her second novel, The Trick to Time, was longlisted for the Women's Prize and her young adult novel Becoming Dinah was shortlisted for the Carnegie CLIP Award 2020. A collection of short stories, Supporting Cast was published in 2020. An anthology of working-class memoir, Common People was crowdfunded and edited by Kit in 2019. Her memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes was published in August 2022. Kit founded her own TV production company, Portopia Productions and the Big Book Weekend, a free digital literary festival in 2020 and was named the FutureBook Person of the Year 2019. She is a patron of Prisoners Abroad, the Bridport Prize and Writing West Midlands, ambassador of Well-being in the Arts and a trustee of The Reading Agency. Kit is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor and Jean Humphreys Writer in Residence at Leicester University. Her new novel Best of Everything will be released in April 2025. Photo credit: Sarah M. Lee
Donal Ryan
Donal Ryan is an award-winning author whose work has been published in over twenty languages to major critical acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature, and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was voted 'Irish Book of the Decade'. His fourth novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018, and won the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His novel, Strange Flowers, was voted Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was a number one bestseller, as was his most recent novel The Queen of Dirt Island, which was also shortlisted for Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.
Rowena Murray
Rowena Murray graduated MA (Hons) from Glasgow University and PhD from the Pennsylvania State University. Formerly Professor in Education at the University of the West of Scotland, Head of Business Writing at Strathclyde Business School and Honorary Visiting Scholar at Liverpool University, she is now Adjunct Professor at Strathclyde Business School. A Principal Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, she was nominated for the Research Culture Award at Stirling University in 2021. She researches academic writing, the subject of her articles, books and chapters. She does online and in-person writing retreats, courses and 1-2-1 sessions with academics, researchers, doctoral students and others. For more information please visit www.anchorage-education.co.uk or click on the link above.
Sheila Killian
Sheila Killian is a writer based outside Limerick City. She was born in Roscommon and now teaches at the University of Limerick's Kemmy Business School. Her fiction, poetry and travel writing have won awards in Ireland and the UK, and her work has been broadcast on RTE Radio. She is a member of Writepace, the Limerick-based writers' co-operative. Her first novel, Something Bigger, was published in July, 2021 by Caritas Press and she is currently working on her second novel. Sheila's pioneering work at Kemmy Business School focuses on corporate social responsibility. She holds senior editorial roles at both the Journal of Business Ethics and Accounting Forum, and serves on the editorial boards of several international journals. She has published a wide range of academic articles addressing issues of social accountability and sustainability, as well as reports to international bodies concerned with tax justice.
Cat Hogan
Cat Hogan is an award nominated Irish Novelist and screenwriter from Co. Wexford. She has published two fiction novels, They All Fall Down (2016) and the Bord Gais Energy nominated Crime Fiction of the Year Novel, There Was A Crooked Man (2017). She was the 2017 recipient of The John Hewitt Society Bursary Award and the University of Limerick Winter Writing School residency in 2018. Cat is on the Panel of Artists for Creative Communities with Wexford County Council and received the 2019 Bursary for Tyrone Guthrie. She was Writer in Residence for the Irish Writers Centre 2020. When she is not conjuring up imaginary friends and mad men, she teaches Creative Writing & Mental Health programs to young teenagers and adults, and tutors in Adult Literacy and Further Education with the Waterford Wexford Education and Training Board.
More Masterclass Leaders
In addition to the amazing expertise from the above Masterclass Leaders, participants will also benefit from sessions from Professor Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, Dr. Christina Morin, Professor Eoin Devereux and more.
The focus of this unique and exciting project is a month-long writing development experience for academic and creative writers. There will be intensive online writing sessions, masterclasses from writing experts and evidence-based workshops hosted by Narrative4 in Limerick City.
Research shows that writers in both academic and creative disciplines face similar obstacles
- lack of time to write
- writer's block
- pressure to publish
yet academic and creative writing are frequently understood as unique processes with writers in both areas rarely coming together to learn from each other.
The CASHEW project aims to bridge the gap and cultivate a cross-sectoral group of writers to undertake an intensive month of writing practice. The goals are for writers to complete a specific writing target, build empathy and understanding between diverse writers and enhance the writing process of all participants.
This year, the project takes place during the month of May hence our Mayday 2024 call out writers.
F.A.Q.s
Who is eligible to participate?
Applicants should consider themselves an active writer.
Applicants should also have a current writing work-in-progress they wish to progress or have a new writing project to commence.
Applicants should available to attend in-person events in Limerick on the morning of Saturday 4th May 2024 and the evening of 31st May 2024.
*This course is not suitable for beginners.*
Where does the programme take place?
There will be two in-person events held at Narrative4, Limerick. The first will be on the morning of Saturday 4th May and the second on the evening of Friday 31st May.
What time commitment is involved?
Sessions take place each weekday. On Mondays, there will be a masterclass led by a writing expert with a particular focus in each session e.g. the craft of writing, targeting your writing. Every Tuesday to Friday there will be facilitator-led writing sessions designed to progress your work at an accelerated pace. These sessions will take place in the evening. There will also be one workshop held on Saturday morning during the first week.
The duration of masterclasses will usually be one hour but this may slightly vary depending on topic and writing sessions will last forty minutes.
Participants will be provided with a detailed schedule before the commencement of the programme.
Is there a cost involved?
How do I sign up?
Following expression of interest you will be requested to complete a short questionnaire.
Places are limited so unfortunately we may not be able to accommodate all applicants on the programme.
When is the closing date for applications?
CASHEW@ul.ie
