Creative Writing Classes
Memoir and Poetry
Improve Your Writing
A Process-based Approach
My teaching and mentoring style is warm and non judgemental, and I meet my students where they are. I do my best to make my classes and workshops engaging, collaborative spaces. My online classes are delivered in such a way that a previous student exclaimed, “you transcend Zoom!” The extracts we read are varied, to promote social equity and understanding, and I empower my students’ learning by maintaining a safe and democratic space. Students being workshopped in my classes guide the class in reading their work, unlike traditional MFA programmes, where “workshoppees” are required to keep silent. I promote a process-based approach where “the only way to fail at writing is not to write.” (Gail Sher) I excel at helping students of poetry find the “objective correlative” or deep image for their inner experiences, and in memoir in assisting students in Developmental editing, and finding the through line, the story within the story that they are writing towards. My classes are empowering, fun and practical experiences and create and maintain a sense of writing community.
My Teaching Experience
I have over a decade’s experience as a facilitator of poetry and memoir on two continents, working in community and university settings. I’ve taught in a New York City public hospital, in libraries, schools, was Writer in Residence with Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx and have taught creative writing in a school in Knocknaheeny, Cork. I’ve worked with students with additional needs, students from the Traveller community, refugees and migrants, and students with English as a second language. I’ve also taught at New York University, University College, Dublin and The American College, Dublin.
Recently I have taught at The Center for Fiction, Hudson Valley Writers Centre and The Irish Writers Centre, mentored via The Munster Literature Centre, led workshops at The Thomas MacDonagh Hedge School, Co. Tipperary and taught in Cork schools via The Unfinished Book of Poetry (mentor in 2023/24 and 2024/25). I also teach via Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools programme as well as the Heritage Council. I’m a mentor with The National Mentoring Programme, and am on a panel of Arts Facilitators, via Cork County Council Library and Arts Service, delivering arts and creative writing workshops and classes throughout the county. I also offer classes to small groups of adults online.
“This has been the third memoir writing course that I've completed in the last year and it has been this one that has made the writing and ideas all come together for me in a way that I wasn't able to see or achieve before. It has been the missing piece and you have been the teacher that I have needed.”
Tara Doonan, student at The Irish Writers Centre
Adult Classes January - March 2026
POETRY WORKSHOPS
(1) Objective Correlatives: A Poetry Craft Workshop in Developing Deep Imagery (via Zoom).
This is a six-week online course via Hudson Valley Writers Centre, starting on Wednesday 7th January (ending 11th February), 1-3 pm EST (6-8 Irish Time). Each two-hour class is equally focused on craft and creative writing workshop. Some of the most significant poems employ “deep imagery” that resonates on more than one level, staying with us long after the poem is read. Finding imagery that conveys our deepest experience is at the centre of this course. More information and Sign Up Here. ($335 USD)
(2) Turning a Manuscript into a Book: How to Assemble a Collection of Poems via The Irish Writers Centre
(225€ member / 250€ non member. Eight-week course, 18th February - 8th April 2025, Wednesdays 6:30-8:30 pm Irish time / 1:30-3:30 pm EST)
Course Summary While there is a lot of focus in the poetry world on attending workshops to craft and finish our poems with the help of colleagues, we can be at sea when it comes to assembling a first book, or collection. Whether you are an experimentalist or more traditional, where poems are placed in relation to each other can make all the difference in putting together a coherent collection, or book. This course will mix poetic craft, via examples of how other poets have made their books, with macro-level creative writing workshop. This will give you both theory and practice in terms of how as to shape the arc of your collection.
Course Outline Books of poetry usually fall into two types: high-concept “projects” or books where the poems centre around a particular subject—US poet Yusef Komunyakaa’s Dien Cai Dau is a good example—or collections where the organising principles are the poet’s own recurring obsessions and themes.
We will look at how to select and winnow, how to assemble an arc, whether or not to use sections and section titles, or sequences, and how poems might speak to or comment on one another within a book, depending on their position. Over eight weeks we will look at a wide variety of methods as to placement of poems, and to edit student manuscripts on a macro level.
Course Outcomes
Students will come away with practical take aways as to the various methods of assembling a collection of poems. They will learn:
how to winnow poems that duplicate one another thematically, or veer too far from the through-line.
how to vary poems in terms of form and length
and how to read their manuscript for what is missing, for the poem, or poems, that might be written to consciously fill the gaps in the overarching narrative.
More information, and sign up here.
(3) Independent Poetry Workshop (via Zoom), eight students maximum per class. Please note, this course is currently fully booked. Contact me to be waitlisted.
Weekly on Thursdays, 7:30 - 9 pm (GMT)
This pay-as-you-go class has been running for two years and is ideal for poets who are starting to write, or have been writing for some time but need feedback and guidance, to build confidence and to learn how to edit their own work. It will also be of benefit to poets who are working towards their first pamphlet (chapbook) or first collection.
How does it work?
Everyone sends a poem or two in advance, and will have the opportunity to workshop a minimum of one poem per class. You will receive supportive critique and suggestions for edits in the class and will also receive written edits from the participants, including myself. We also look at an exemplary poem for things we might “steal” for our own writing. This is not so much literary analysis as opening the engine of the poem to help us to learn to think as writers. From this we design our own creative triggers or prompts based on form or theme and if there is time, we do some in-class writing, or finish with a sense of something we might work on before the next class. Apart from workshop, the class will focus on craft issues such as the "objective correlative” (finding images in the “outer” world to reflect inner experiences), how to successfully finish a poem by finding resonant poetic closure (and not a cheesy “pat” ending); metaphor / simile / deep imagery; assonance / alliteration; how to lineate or enjamb a poem properly; how to balance thought and emotion, as well as inner and outer worlds.
How Much Does It Cost?
The class is €80 per four weeks, which can be paid in advance, via IBAN, Revolut or Zelle. You can join the class for as long as you like, four weeks is the minimum commitment.
How do I sign up?
Any questions, email: david[at]davidmcloghlin.com
Memoir Boot Camp: an Accountability-Driven Generative Craft Class Offering Core Aspects of Creative Nonfiction (Memoir and Personal Essay).
5:30 - 7:30 pm GMT (12:30 - 2:30 pm EST North America)
Every Thursday, from 15th January - 19th March, for 10 weeks, two hours per week.
Please email david[at]davidmcloghlin.com to express interest. 375€ / $450 USD
What if you could join a course where you could learn and deepen in the core aspects of memoir as part of a writing community, with a trusted group of fellow writers and an experienced writing coach, developing practical learnings that you can take with you long after the course is over? This course will suit students who are not yet ready for workshop, or who need inspiration and new ideas. If you are starting or revising a memoir or essay project, this is the one for you.
This course covers such memoir essentials as how to
write immersive scenes, weaving in effective exposition.
identify and implement the “story within the story,” or through-line / central narrative thread.
develop your narrative voice.
work with leitmotifs, by implementing recurring images, or thematic elements.
work with different time lines and establish a sense of the “narrative present”.
map your narrative arc and develop a structure that works for you.
use free writing to break through blocks and progressively home in on the story you want to tell.
Further Course Details
This 10-week evening course is capped at eight students, with a supportive, accountability focus. Each two-hour class is dedicated to learning a specific aspect of craft. We will closely read exemplary texts (PDFs provided), and then practice our learnings in tailored prompts.
With three x 15 minutes writing prompts per class, you will have the space to potentially write 500 to 1,000 words (5,000 - 10,000 words across the course as a whole).
You will also receive a minimum of half an hour of individual consultation to assist you in moving your story forward.
Craft reading are equitable in terms of representation of BIPOC memoirists and essayists.
Online via Zoom with Google Drive to house learning resources (Power Point slides, PDF extracts from memoir / creative nonfiction, all of which can be downloaded for future reference and study) and student-friendly environment.
What’s App accountability group. There is also accountability in the option of submitting weekly writing to keep you on track.
375€ / $450 USD (20-hour course: 18.75€ per hour), payable via Revolut, IBAN or Zelle).
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Composing Yourself: How to Find and Hone Your Narrative Voice in a Memoir or a Collection of Personal Essays, a Master Class via The Shipman Agency
2 Sessions: Saturdays, February 21 + 28 2026,
11:00 am -1:00 pm EST (4-6 pm Irish time)
In her seminal book, The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick makes a surprising assertion, that writing memoirs and personal essays requires us to construct a narrator to tell our story. This narrator is “composed” by selecting and weaving the raw material of our lives into a clear throughline. Whether detached, wise, wry, or humorous as they reflect on the past, done well, this narrator wins the reader’s trust by stitching moments together and presenting them as examples of insight and understanding into a particular life with universal application.
The most practical way of finding this narrator is via exposition (also known as reflection, “glide,” or “summary”). These thoughtful passages come between or woven within more immersive, scene-like moments, and it is here that the writer provides essential information that moves the story forward, often across time, tells the reader what to think, and what the story means and is really about. Learning what your story means for you will, in turn, will help you to develop and improve your narrative voice, via well-employed exposition. Memoir is often comprised of two main elements: scenes that tell the core story of the past—the younger you—and exposition in the voice of the adult narrator, the wiser “you,” located in the “narrative present” of the book, reflecting on the past from a position of understanding. It is these moments of reflection that weave the story together, conveying the sense of “I didn’t know at the time but,” typically in the voice of hard-won insight.
Workshop Highlights:
In this master class you will gain greater clarity around differentiating scenes from exposition (showing from telling).
This will help you to learn the difference between telling the story of what happened and commenting on what it means.
Clarifying these aspects will assist you in bringing forth a narrative voice capable of knitting the various elements of your book together.
More About Me: My teaching style is warm, supportive and democratic. In this I am inspired by teachers like Felicia Rose Chavez (The Anti-Racist Creative Writing Workshop). In supporting students in their writing process and establishing a writing practice, I draw from Joan Bolker (Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day) and Gail Sher (One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers). My classes are discussion-based, and a blend of teaching and facilitation. I am an award-winning poet, and writer of memoir, and have taught extensively in several genres, including memoir with The Irish Writers Center, The Center for Fiction and Hudson Valley Writers Center.
Any questions, email: david[at]davidmcloghlin.com
Classes in Schools
If you are a teacher in a primary or secondary school in Ireland, I’d be happy to work with you directly (contact me for rates), or apply for a grant via Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools programme. The programme pays for 1/2 of the visit. For Writers in Schools, follow these steps:
Consult my profile on the Writers in Schools directory.
Contact me to decide on a date.
Once that’s decided, apply for a visit via this form.
Please note, there is high demand, so apply two months in advance.
“Thanks so much for a wonderful class! You really established a comfortable environment for sharing, and did a great job introducing the important craft aspects of memoir.”
Lillian Duggan, The Ideal World
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Since 2023
Visiting teacher with Writers in Schools.
Poetry as Commemoration, via UCD library (50 hours of teaching in libraries and secondary schools across Munster)
Cruinniú na nÓg (via Cork County Council and My Creative Wish).
Previously: Resident Writer at Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx.
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Since 2023
Memoir: more than 100 hours with The Center for Fiction, Hudson Valley Writers Centre and The Irish Writers Centre.
Two-day poetry workshop at The Thomas McDonagh Hedge School, Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary.
The Unfinished Book of Poetry (mentor in 2023/24 and 2024/25).
Cork County Council (pilot scheme to support employees’ wellbeing through creativity).
West Cork Literary Festival (summer 2023).
Culture Night, Fermoy Library (September 2023).
The American College, Dublin: September-December 2023.
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New York University Writing Fellow and Creative Writing Teacher at Coler-Specialty Hospital (New York): September 2011 to May 2012. Weekly class with long-term-care patients and individual mentorship of a patient with Multiple Sclerosis.
Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx (Writer in Residence, 2013)
Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Master Class, Hill-Stead Museum, on the poetry of place, May 2018.
Resident Writer, Hunts Point Alliance for Children (Bronx, New York) October 2013 to December 2014: Taught craft to teenaged, multilingual students (some with learning challenges) via the workshop method, creating syllabi and curricula involving the work of renowned writers, utilising bilingual Spanish-English texts where appropriate. Developed and used age-appropriate activities to encourage collaboration and constructive critique.
Creative Writing Instructor at New York University, September 2011 to December 2011, where I taught the undergraduate syllabus “An Introduction to Poetry and Fiction”.
Creative Writing and Editorial Mentor to the Young Emerging Writers’ Forum (Dingle, Co. Kerry) October 2008: an Arts Council sponsored project, where teenaged editors put together and published a literary magazine for young people, Dingle, County Kerry.
Graduate Instructor of Hispanic Literature (Spanish poetry and Latin American short story) at University College, Dublin, 2005.