Teacher and Facilitator of Creative Writing

Memoir and Poetry

*Scroll down for classes

How I Help Your Writing

My teaching and mentoring style is warm and nonjudgemental, and I meet my students where they are. I do my best to make my classes and workshops engaging, collaboratives 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 teach 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 McDonagh Hedge School, Cloughjordan, 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 (for my profile, follow this link) 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. 

Three Classes for Adults, Running in January 2025

Any questions, contact me here

#1 MEMOIR BOOTCAMP: Kickstart Your Memoir or Personal Essay Project

Eight-week course (16 hours) of workshop and craft, with accountability to help you re-engage or keep going with your writing project, generate new work and edit existing writing while learning important elements of craft.

Book via Eventbrite.ie

This eight-week course is the perfect way to re-engage or keep going with a memoir or personal essay project in the context of highly supportive accountability. My goal is for you to generate new work, edit existing writing, while at the same time learning important elements of the craft of memoir and personal essay.

This course takes place every Saturday from 2 to 4 pm (GMT) for eight weeks via Zoom, starting on 11th January, 2025. (Please scroll down for class schedule.) Each two-hour class will be divided between Craft and Workshop, one hour for each, and student numbers are capped at 10.

In Workshop, you will

  • present your writing for positive critique by a supportive community

  • workshop twice over eight weeks: a total of 20 pages (5-6,000 words).

  • receive actionable comments—in writing and in class—from 9 other students and myself to assist you in moving through the next draft.

  • improve your editorial eye by supportively critiquing the work of others.

In the Craft hour, we will discuss and practice how to

  • improve your scenes and exposition (exposition is the connective, informative prose that links scenes together and moves the story forward).

  • use free writing to write your story as well as reflect on it, and as such progressively home in on the deeper story you want to tell.

  • identify the “story within the story,” or through-line / central narrative thread.

  • find a structure that works for you.

  • map plot points, obligatory scenes and characters.

  • develop your narrative voice.

  • work with leitmotifs, by implementing recurring images, or thematic elements.

  • use time in a convincing way to echo how memory works.

Other Elements:

  1. Reading: a weekly chapter from an exemplary memoir or personal essay will be assigned for homework in order to learn to read as writers, feeding into your deliberate practice of the craft of memoir. Students will have access to a Google Drive with a folder for each week, complete with relevant slides and reading extracts in PDF form. As such, there will be no need to buy books.

  2. Accountability: in-class writing via generative prompts in response to important elements of craft, and a supportive What’s App group (optional) to help keep you on track with your writing goals. We will discuss our manageable word count targets at the beginning of the course.

  3. Office Hours: one-on-one time with me to discuss both the bigger picture aspects of your project as well as highly specific elements that you need help with.

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.

Outcomes: You can expect to come away with a greater understanding of important craft elements in creative nonfiction. You will workshop two chapters (approximately 5,000 words), and will have ample opportunity to develop and sustain a generative writing practice, and will be supported in generating new work.

Weekly Schedule (all classes are on Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., GMT. Please note: no class on 1st February because of the St. Brigid's Day Bank Holiday)

  • 11th January

  • 18th January

  • 25th January

  • 8th February

  • 15th February

  • 22nd February

  • 1st March

  • 8th March.

#2 and #3 WEEKLY POETRY WORKSHOPS (via Zoom) eight students maximum in each class

  • Weekly on Tuesdays, 6:30 - 8 pm (GMT) (three places remaining)

  • Weekly on Thursdays, 7:30 - 9 pm (GMT) (four places remaining)

Contact me to book your place (20% off if you book eight classes in advance: pay €128 instead of €160).

This pay-as-you-go class 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 Much Does It Cost? The class is €20 per 90 minute session, which can be paid on a class-by-class basis or monthly, whichever suits you best, via IBAN, Revolut or Paypal. You can join the class for as long as you like, there is no advance commitment to a minimum / maximum period of classes.

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 do I judge success? By seeing both an improvement in the students’ writing and in the self confidence of the students, as well as by the team spirit of the class, which creates and maintains literary community. Beyond supporting each other’s writing via positive critique, we also support one another in the sometimes chilly landscape of the publishing world. In this class we are implicitly vanquishing the ghosts of impostor syndrome, and literary low self esteem. I gently push students to aim high in their submissions and to not "self reject”.

Any questions, contact me here.

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:

(1) Consult my profile on the Writers in Schools directory.

(2) Contact me to decide on a date.

(3) Once that’s decided, apply for a visit via this form.

Please note, there is high demand, so apply two months in advance.

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.

Testimonials

  • 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.

  • Thank you again for leading a wonderful workshop! It was exactly what I needed to get me going on my memoir and I'll draw on the lessons I learned as I continue to work on it.

    Christine Clay (student from The Center for Fiction).

  • 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.

  • David is a great teacher, he engaged so deeply with our individual work and helped me to see what was working in my pieces and gave great advice for what to do with it next. His vast knowledge of literature meant that he would regularly reference other works that became points of inspiration.

    Kajal Odedra, author of Do Something: Activism for Everyone and Hair/Power: Essays on Control and Freedom.

Recent Classes and Workshops (since January 2023)

Classes and Workshops Before 2023

  • 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.