" Kildare Library Service is delighted to announce the first events in our Connections Through Literature series for 2022, in association with The Irish Writers Centre and supported by Creative Ireland. This series of creative writing workshops offer a hybrid model of online and in-person courses that are free and open to all."

Gavin McCrea was born in Dublin in 1978. His first novel, Mrs Engels, was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize and the Walter Scott Prize, and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

Course Summary In this six-week course for writers of all levels, you will use fiction to give voice to the LGBT+ experience. For homework each week, you will read one novel extract or short story and complete one short writing exercise. In each session you will focus on a single topic, such as selfhood, identity, viewpoint, and defamiliarisation, with the aim of producing one finished short story of your own by the end of the course.

Course Outline: Beginning on Wednesday 25 May, the group will meet once a week: Wednesday at 18:30. Each class will be two hours long. The classes will be structured in the following way

Each week, we will focus on specific themes relevant, in some way or another, to LGBT+ writing: Week One: Secrets : Week Two: Avowal/Confession Week Three: Voice/Selfhood/Identity Week Four: Desire and Violence Week Five: Desire and Illness Week Six: Defamiliarisation/Queerness

Please note that the details of events listed above are provided by the relevant Local Authorities.