New course with Prof Mary McCay: The American Short Story

Professor Mary McCay

Friday 26 and Saturday 27 November, 2021

Carmelite Centre, Aungier Street, Dublin 2, from 10am to 5pm

Tuition: 300 euro

To book or for more information, please email clairekeeganfictionclinic@gmail.com

The short story has been a staple of American literature since the American Revolution. Charles Brockden Brown, the first American to earn his living writing of strange phenomena and political conflict, wrote “Somnambulism” in 1805. Shortly after, Washington Irving popularized the form with “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” both of which created iconic American characters. Since then, American writers have been changing the form, testing its limits. And questioning what America really means. During this weekend, we will look at a series of short stories, examine the forms, critique the contexts, and understand the many variations of the short story in America.

Reading List

Classic American Renaissance Tales

“My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” Nathaniel Hawthorne (1832)

“Bartleby the Scrivener,” Herman Melville (1853)

The Harlem Renaissance

“Blood Burning Moon,” Jean Toomer (1923)

“Story in Harlem Slang,” Zora Neale Hurston (1942)

Money ad Manhood

“A Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” F. Scott Fitzgerald (1927)

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Ernest Hemingway (1933)

Faces of the Thirties

“Theft,” Katherine Anne Porter (1930)

“Here We Are,” Dorothy Parker (1931)

African American Writing and Civil Rights

“Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin (1957)

“Everyday Use,” Alice Walker (1973)

New American Classics

“Where I’m Calling From,” Raymond Carver (1983)

“Brokeback Mountain,” Annie Proulx (1997)

Mary McCay, Professor Emerita, has taught several weekend seminars in Ireland, including Southern Writers and W.B. Yeats. During the pandemic, she taught three Zoom classes to Claire Keegan’s groups: African American Voices, James Joyce, and Feminist Writings. Mary McCay was Claire Keegan’s advisor and professor during her time at Loyola University and is responsible for her introduction to and initial studies of literature. She is vaccinated and will be in Ireland in November to meet with students interested in the American Short Story.

Residential Writing Weekend with Claire Keegan

January 1–3, 2021

Teach Bhride Holistic Centre, Tullow, Co. Carlow, Ireland

The residential writing weekend with Claire Keegan will see all participants arriving at Teach Bhride on Friday afternoon before dinner. The next two mornings will be spent writing in any genre in well lighted, quiet spaces without mobile phones.

Lectures and discussions will be held in the afternoons and evenings on the following:

  • Letters by Anton Chekhov & others
  • Letters by writers on writing
  • Essays by Eudora Welty, Frank O’Connor and Flannery O’Connor
  • Hemingway’s advice on writing
  • Some poems on writing and creativity
  • Viewing of A Private World, a documentary on John McGahern

Tuition includes all meals and two nights’ accommodation, with everyone arriving before dinner on Friday, helping themselves to breakfast both mornings, and leaving before dinner on Sunday evening. This course will suit anyone interested in a quiet weekend of writing. None of what is written will be read aloud. It’s a chance to engage with the intricacies of the creative process and use your imagination.

To book your place, contact ckfictionclinic@yahoo.com Tuition is 500 Euro. A 50% deposit secures.

Read reviews of previous courses and workshops on g.page/ckfictionclinic/review

Claire Keegan’s story collections include Antarctica, Walk the Blue Fields and Foster (Faber & Faber). These stories, translated into 17 languages, have won numerous awards. Her debut, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. “These stories are among the finest stories recently written in English,” wrote the Observer. Walk the Blue Fields, her second collection, was Richard Ford’s Book of the Year in 2010, and won the Edge Hill Prize, awarded to the strongest collection published in the British Isles. Foster won the Davy Byrne’s Award, the then world’s richest prize for a single story. New Yorker readers chose Foster as their story of the year. It was also published in Best American Stories and is now on the school syllabus in Ireland. Keegan has earned an international reputation as a teacher of fiction, having taught workshops on four continents.

“Every line seems to be a lesson in the perfect deployment of both style and emotion.” – Hilary Mantel

“The best stories are so textured and so moving, so universal but utterly distinctive, that it’s easy to imagine readers savoring them many years from now and to imagine critics, far in the future, deploying new lofty terms to explain what it is that makes Keegan’s fiction work.” – The New York Times

“Every single word in the right place and pregnant with double meaning.” – Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times

“Keegan is a rarity, someone I will always want to read.” – Richard Ford