Creative Writing Workshops

Strandhill, Co. Sligo

Six Thursday Evenings

12th January - 16th February 2011

7pm – 10pm

·        With Órfhlaith Ní Chonaill M.Phil.(Creative Writing)

·        Write with others in a small group, in a safe and supportive environment

·        Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method as developed by Pat Schneider

·        All writing is treated as fiction

·        Newborn material is not open to criticism

• Open to all writers, male and female
• For writers working in any genre
• Cost: €50 for 6 workshops (paid in advance), €40 concession (paid in advance),  €10, €8 per individual workshop. Bursaries or barters considered.

Booking: info@writersinksligo.com   Call or Text: 0872799108

Writers’ Ink is an

Monthly Workshops

 in

Holy Hill Hermitage

 Next Workshop December 17th 2011

  9.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. Mentoring Service available on the afternoon of each workshop.

And on the third Saturday of Each Month 

  
Contact info@writersinksligo.com or phone Órfhlaith (Orla) at 0872799108

You can combine one or more of the monthly workshops (above)

with a residency in a hermitage at Holy Hill. Check out the website

www.spirituallifeinstitute.org

  

   Awaking from near death after a vicious assault, an Irish priest in Kenya questions his belief in God and his mission to Africa.  Can he forgive his attacker? Did he provoke the attack?  Can he, or should he now, suppress the feelings he has for a beautiful young African woman?

    The Man With No Skin, was chosen from a hundred manuscripts to become the first publication by Dialogue Publishing Inc, an independent publisher, in Colorado in 2005.  It won first prize in the Fiction category at the Colorado Independent Publishers (CIPA) EVVY Awards 2006 and was runner up in the Multicultural Fiction Category of IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Awards) 2006.  The Man With No Skin is set in Kenya and has received excellent reviews, comparing it to the work of Chinua Achebe, J.M. Coetzee and Alexander McCall Smith.

Reviews:   
Last Friday night I started a new novel about Africa and Ireland by Orfhlaith Ni Chonaill, (who worked in Kenya for four years) called The Man With No Skin, (which is what the native Kenyans called the first white man) and only laid it down at first light the next day.  The Man With No Skin is an absorbing story, ranging from Kenya to Cape Clear.

   Although it’s only Orfhlaith’s first novel, it carries big ideas with the deceptive ease of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, but has the same eye for local African colour as Alexander McCall Smith in his comic classic, The No 1Ladies Detective Agency.

   Amazingly, although published to acclaim in America, this novel has not yet found an outlet in Ireland.  Eason’s and Hughes should get on the ball.  Mark my words, this novel is going to Oprah and beyond.

                                                                                                   Eoghan Harris, Sunday Independent. August 7th 2005

"Orfhlaith Ni Chonaill puts the reader in the center of the world as it now exists: raw and breathtakingly beautiful; violent and unutterably tender.  The Man With No Skin will change you.  Ordinary lives in Africa today - a black gardener, a white "Mama", an Irish priest, a black African woman - here become a tapestry before which we see our own skins, and what they signify in a world of AIDS and other terrors.  Between the Christian god and Ngai, the god of the mountain, Ni Chonaill allows us to find our own way toward something like revelation."

                                          Pat Schneider, Amherst Writers & Artists

The Man With No Skin, is now available in Ireland and can be bought from this site.

  To celebrate, I am offering the first 50 copies at a reduced price of 12 euro (including postage) RRP €14.95. It could make a great present for someone you know.