The Short Story: Editing and Revising Your Work

Online, via Zoom. 2 hours.

Oftentimes, our writing is hinting to us about where it needs to go, but we don’t know how to hear it. In this two-hour session, I will share early drafts of one of my own short stories (‘Fugue’) and talk through the many missteps and wrong turns the story took before its eventual publication.

Ahead of the session, participants will be sent a PDF of the story, and asked to tell me what they’re grappling with or unsure about when it comes to drafting and editing their own fiction. These responses will inform our direction of travel!

This one-off session should be suitable for anyone who is writing short stories and feels there’s too big a gap between what they know they're capable of achieving and what’s actually being realised on the page.

  • Sometimes in October. Check back or sign up to the mailing list below for updates.

  • €50 | €35 concession rate (unwaged, low income, no questions asked)

  • 8-10

  • ‘The session was so brilliant! As someone between jobs I really appreciated the affordability. But it was worth so much more, amazing. Incredibly interesting to see the different drafts and such wise advice, I was furiously scribbling notes the whole time.’ 

    ‘It was excellent, a mix of the technical and inspirational.’

    ‘The whole session made me think of re-drafting in a different way… a great revelation.’

    ‘It was really lovely and brilliant and it felt like an encouraging, affirming, warm and connected space – especially hearing and relating to everyone's writing niggles. I found it so, so useful, fascinating and inspiring to see your drafts for ‘Fugue’ and hear you talk about the process you went through… I made lots of notes during the discussion and it just made me want to immediately start writing.’ 

This course and others will run in the autumn.

Sign up below for updates.

  • I am the author of two books of stories: We Don’t Know What We’re Doing (2015) and Open Up (2023), both published by Faber & Faber.

    My awards include the Wales Book of the Year, The Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award, and a Somerset Maugham Award. In 2023, I was named as one of the 20 Best Young British Novelists by Granta magazine. My work has been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize; and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Sunday Times Short Story Award. My books have been chosen as a Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Observer,The Spectator, The Irish Times, and The Irish Independent. 

    Stories of mine have been published, anthologised, and broadcast in numerous venues, including: The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story; Best European Fiction; Zoetrope; Granta; BBC Radio 4; The Stinging Fly; and most recently in Italian translation in Il Rifugio dell'Ircocervo.

  • As an editor and mentor, I have worked on stories and books by authors including Nicole Flattery, Rebecca Ivory, Michael Magee, and Chetna Maroo.

    I devised and edited Dubliners 100 (Tramp Press), wherein 15 Irish authors wrote ‘cover versions’ of the stories from James Joyce’s Dubliners. The book won the Best Irish-published book at the Irish Book Awards.

    Between 2014 and 2016 , I was Editor of The Stinging Fly magazine. I later became Editor at Large, where I ran the Stinging Fly’s writer development programme, mentored a number of emerging writers; and commissioned and edited fiction, essays, and literary criticism.

    Today, I work independently with writers, offering one-to-one mentoring and group workshops. More info about my editing here.

  • I have delivered workshops, talks and seminars at universities across Ireland and the UK, including University College Cork, where I taught on the MA in Creative Writing. I have also taught and given talks for institutions and organisations such as The Irish Writers Centre, The Faber Academy, The Stinging Fly, and The Arvon Foundation.