Teach Bhride Holistic Centre, Tullow, Co Carlow, Ireland

Tuition fees: Residential € 2,600 Non-Residential € 2,100

Professor Mary McCay will travel to Tullow to teach The Emerging Self – the same course she taught award-winning short story writer and novelist Claire Keegan at Loyola University in New Orleans almost 40 years ago.

Mary will lecture on eight texts including Sula by Toni Morrison, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, and the film version of My Beautiful Laundrette by Hanif Kureishi.

“No matter our age, we should always be questioning if our attitudes have become ingrained; we should never stop examining the society we live in, never fail to ask ourselves who we are and what we stand for. The books I taught to Claire’s class still ask us what we believe and what is central to our sense of who we are. It is a self that should always be emerging.” Mary McCay

The course will begin on the afternoon of August 24 with an introductory lecture. For the next four days, all participants will write, read or study in the mornings. Tea, coffee & scones will be served at 11am, with lunch at 12.45pm. Mary will then lecture daily on the texts from 2pm-5pm, with a short coffee break in the middle of the session. Pre-dinner drinks will be served in the living room at 5.30pm, followed by dinner at 6:30pm.

On the final day, August 29, Mary will lecture from 9am until 1pm, with a coffee break at 11am. The course will finish at 1pm.

The residential fee includes all meals, drinks, tuition and accommodation. Some non-residential places will also be made available which include everything except B&B. Participants are welcome to arrive from noon onwards on August 24. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, diabetic and lactose-free diets will be catered for.

Buses run daily between Dublin City Centre and Tullow. Parking is free.

If you’d like to make a reservation on this course, please email Claire Simpson on clairekeeganfiction@gmail.com