Skip to Main Content

Bi-Annual Summer Writing Seminar in Ireland

Save the Date for Summer 2025

Bi-Annual Summer Writing Seminar

This bi-annual 10-day seminar features workshops, lectures, readings, gatherings and a full day off for excursions. Enjoy daily time for writing, reading, exploring and fueling up for the pages you’ll fill once you get home.

Though offered through Bay Path University’s Master of Fine Arts program in creative nonfiction, the week is open to writers of nonfiction, fiction, poetry and/or scriptwriting. It is open both to students in the program and, upon acceptance, writers from the larger literary community.

We’re thrilled about our faculty and guest lineup, which includes Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, whom The Times Literary Supplement has called "the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War.” Here are our faculty and facilitators for 2020 (names followed by at least a few of their specialties):

Seminar Facilitators
Leanna James Blackwell

Seminar Faculty
Mia Gallagher (fiction, scriptwriting)
Ann Hood (nonfiction including memoir, fiction)
Paul Muldoon (poetry, criticism)
Nuala O'Connor (poetry, nonfiction, fiction)
Tommy Shea (journalism, sportswriting)

Seminar Speakers/Readers
Leanna James Blackwell (nonfiction, personal essay, scriptwriting)
Ted Deppe (poetry, nonfiction)
Jean Hanff Korelitz (fiction, essays)

Additional Reading By:
Annie Deppe (poetry)


Each writer in our group of up to 30 participants chooses two series of three-morning workshops, held either at our longtime home base, Bambury’s Guesthouse, or in the town center just down the hill. When not in workshop, or attending a lunchtime Writers’ Lounge gathering, or an afternoon

“Tea and Talk” and reading, enjoy exploring of the gorgeous Dingle Peninsula, which National Geographic has described as “the most beautiful place on earth.” Visit Great Blasket Island, walk a section of The Dingle Way, ride a horse, surf, swim, take in a concert, feast on locally sourced cuisine and browse the many shops (among them, two fine bookstores).

A group reading on the final Saturday will showcase work by each of our participants and caps our week together.