Price: $80

Writing is often presented as an act of divine inspiration, where good work flows—arriving ready-made with no need for intervention—while bad work is horrible to make, arrives looking like cr*p and needs buckets of effort to be made even the smallest bit better. This interactive conversation, powered by questions from the participants, will explore the role of pain in creative process. How it blocks, how it feeds and how, perhaps, it may offer a path forward.

One of Gallagher’s books is included in the registration fee.

Mia Gallagher is based in Dublin. She writes novels, stories and non-fiction and has devised, written and performed for the stage. Her books include HellFire (Penguin Ireland, 2006), awarded the Irish Tatler Literature Award, Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland (New Island, 2016), longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and her short-story collection Shift (New Island, 2018), shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards and long-listed for the Edge Hill Award. Her work has appeared as chapbooks and in anthologies, journals and newspapers. Other awards include many Arts Council of Ireland grants, the START Short Fiction Prize and short-listings for Fish, New Irish Writing and the Trevor-Bowen Award. Forthcoming work includes essays on the work of Catherine Dunne and Val Mulkearns for, respectively, Arlen House and Stinging Fly, and Dubliners – a book featuring Mia’s short fiction in English and Italian alongside the artwork of Dublin-based Italian painter Mario Sughi (Marinoni Books, Milan). Mia’s work has been translated into Italian, Romanian and Greek. She is a contributing editor of Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly and a member of Aosdána, an affiliation of artists peer-elected for their contribution to Irish culture. Mia has taught, facilitated, edited, mentored and otherwise nurtured other writers in their craft and process for over three decades.