DOOLIN WRITERS' WEEKEND 2026
WHERE WORDS GO WILD!
Our Story
After a few years’ hiatus, Doolin Writers’ Weekend is back. Words have always found a home in Doolin and this festival is still the kind of gathering where everyone belongs, and never the kind that takes itself too seriously. Writing is a lonely game, and January can be a lonely month, but Doolin is where you’ll find friendship, inspiration, and the company of other writers who know the road.
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It’s a weekend of open doors, stories shared, pints, tunes, and conversations that carry long into the night. Workshops, readings, music, yoga, séances and mad masses, open mics and food worth travelling for. Doolin Writers' is a festival that feeds the head and the heart.
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Please see PDF with full itinerary of the weekend here
WHAT'S ON
Below is our jam packed itinerary where you can see what's happening throughout the entire weekend.
Scroll to see what's in store!
ITINERARY
FRIDAY 16th JANUARY
3.00pm–5.00pm: Workshops
Location:
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald: Narrative Hydraulics: Time, Pace and Motion in Story
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This workshop explores and experiments with the tricky issue of handling the passage of time in storytelling. Too fast, and you risk rushing your reader through potentially vital moments in the story, too slow and you lose narrative momentum. We'll discuss and try out some key pacing options (gaps, summaries, scenes, dilations and pauses) to help tighten and frame the important moments and transitions in our stories.
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Location: The Barn
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Lucy O’Callaghan: The Story Engine: Plotting your Novel
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Join Lucy O’Callaghan for a Plot-Your-Novel Workshop designed to help writers turn ideas into compelling, structured narratives. Through a mix of clear guidance and hands-on writing exercises, you’ll learn how to build strong story arcs, deepen character motivations, and craft plot points that keep readers turning pages. Whether you’re starting a new project or untangling a draft, this workshop will help you develop a solid roadmap and renewed excitement for your story. Come ready to brainstorm, experiment, and discover the story only you can tell.
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Location: The Attic
7.30pm: Opening Reception
Location: The Barn
Join us in The Barn to kick off the weekend with a welcome from the team,
a glass in hand and a room full of words
8.00pm: Opening Reading
Location: The Barn
With Mary Costello. Mary Costello has published two novels and two short story collections. Her first novel, Academy Street, won the Irish Novel of the Year Award and was named overall Irish Book of the Year in 2014. Her work has been shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Costa First Novel Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, the Dalkey Novel Award and the EU Prize for Literature, among others. A new novel, A Beautiful Loan, is forthcoming in March.
8.30pm: Spoken Word Performance
Location: The Barn
With Abby Oliveira
10.00pm: Séance in The Attic
Led by High Priestess Branwen - a candlelit ritual gathering in the shadows, calling in voices and visions from beyond the veil
SATURDAY 17TH JANUARY
8.30am–9.30am
Location: The Barn
Morning Yoga
10.00am–12.00pm: Workshops
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Susan Tomaselli - Walk the Line: A Workshop on the Essay
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Artist Paul Klee has a phrase in his notebooks: ‘taking a line for a walk.’ Join Susan Tomaselli to explore what that means. Based on her essay on essays in the current Irish Writers Handbook 2026, we will look at the shape of what an essay can be and how we might manifest that. She argues that a good essay is a journey – knotty and meandering, with moments of clarifying insights. This is a generative workshop for emerging writers.
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Location: The Barn
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Tadhg O’Sullivan - Between the Lines & The Lens
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This workshop looks at using literary texts in film-making. Drawing on his own experience of making films using everything from Franz Kafka's short stories to Doireann Ní Ghríofa's poetry to his own original writing, Tadhg O'Sullivan will explore the possibilities and power of combining images and words.
Participants will bring texts they have written or chosen and will be guided in the practical and artistic aspects of lifting the words off the page and into the realm of cinema.
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Location: The Attic
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Luke Morgan - Ag Tusu Arís: Returning to Writing in Irish
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This is a workshop for anyone who has an interest in building the confidence to write in the Irish language. The aim of the workshop is to give writers with some experience in writing poetry their first steps towards creating new work through Irish. This workshop will not be intimidating, judgemental, or designed to “test” your level of Irish; Instead, it will give you the courage to play and be creative with the level of Irish that you have.
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Location: Glas
12.00pm–2.00pm
2.00pm–4.00pm: Workshops
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Lunch Break
Belinda McKeon - The Character Alchemist: Creating Vivid Characters
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This workshop for fiction writers will explore techniques in characterisation, using generative prompts and exercises to build specificity and detail for characters of all kinds. The focus will be on your protagonist, but the work of writing secondary and peripheral characters will also be discussed. We'll look at texts by authors including Jennifer Egan, Deborah Eisenberg, Paul Murray and Tessa Hadley as we consider what makes a character sharp and memorable. The workshop is suitable for anyone with a work in progress, both shorter and longer form.
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Location: The Barn
Abby Oliveira - Stirring the Big Pot: Gathering Mini-Muses
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This is an interactive session open to writers of any genre, that encourages creative imagination and play. We will gather mini-muses from materials, objects, and discoveries found on the day and add then to our ‘big pot.’ In smaller groups, we’ll explore some of the weird and wonderful potential that exists among them, and consider how cinematic framing techniques can be employed in our writing - shaping the way our stories or ideas are developed and received. Participants might craft a new draft of writing or sprout a few buds of ideas for what could become future work; all outcomes are good outcomes here in the mouth of Imbolc.
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Location: Cullinan's
Ian Maleney - The Look: Filmic Techniques in Written Narrative
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The camera and the pen are very different tools, and yet the questions they raise are often connected. How can we focus on one character, or a group? How do we enter a room? When do we leave it? How are scenes constructed and deconstructed? What is said and not said, seen and not seen? For storytellers, in any form, these are critical concerns which shape and define our work. In this workshop, we will look at specific examples from a broad range of films, as well as some writing, and discuss how the grammar of the screen can be translated to, and adapted for, the page. This workshop is ultimately an invitation to look afresh at the movements and disclosures of the camera, and to ask, how can these techniques enrich and deepen our writing?
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Location: Glas
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Alice Kinsella - Don’t you know who I am: The Art of Telling Your Own Story
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Have you ever felt like writing a memoir, but worried no one would be interested? This workshop will explore the possibilities the form of memoir has to offer when writing about your own life. Using prompts, examples, and discussion, we will see that what makes a good memoir is not who you are or what your life has looked like, but how you tell your story.
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Location: The Attic
5.00pm: The Short Story Now: Voices from Our Place
Location: The Barn
Readings and conversation with Mattie Brennan, Caitríona Quirke and Laura Blaise McDonnell
6.00pm: Book Launch
Location: Location: The Attic
The Sleep Thief, Stephen Murray
7.00pm: In Conversation
with Roddy Doyle
Location: The Barn
A special evening with one of Ireland’s most beloved writers in conversation with Elizabeth Reapy
9.00pm: The Listening Rooms
Location: Location: The Attic
Featured reading by June Caldwell followed by an Open mic of stories, songs and words that go wherever they please, hosted by David Donohue
11pm
Location:
DJ Set with Margaret O’Connor
SUNDAY 18TH JANUARY
8.00am–9.00am:
Location: Location: The Attic
Sound Bath
9.00am–11.00am: Workshops
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Alice Kinsella - First Line to First Draft: Poetry Workshop
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How do you start a poem? How do you know when the first draft is finished? In this workshop participants will be guided through the beginnings of a poem. Using prompts, examples, and discussion, you'll move through the seeds of inspiration to having a first draft of a poem.
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Location: The Barn
Daniel Wade - Craftwork: Plot, Dialogue & Writing for the Stage
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Interested in writing for the stage? Have you created a character (or characters) destined for live performance? Does your dialogue crackle so much the page is left in ashes? Or are you just curious on where to start? This practical, craft-focused workshop will explore the core elements of dramatic writing: plot, dialogue and what makes the architecture of a scene compelling. Through a series of guided exercises, close attention to dramatic tension and quick-fire scene-building tasks, participants will learn how to shape their story, raise the narrative stakes and create dialogue that both reveals character and ensures their play's momentum. With examples from classic texts, as well as more contemporary works, we’ll examine how a play moves, what makes a scene twist and turn, and how to write theatrical moments that translate fully into live performance. This workshop will be ideal for emerging playwrights or anyone curious about writing for the stage.
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Location: The Attic
12.00pm–2.00pm: Sunday Mass
Location: The Barn
With High Priestess Branwen, Luke Morgan, and Aoife Dunne: part performance, part blessing, part madness
3pm–4pm: Writing the Other
Location: The Barn
A conversation between Aisling Walsh and Rafael Mendes about representation of characters whose lives, experiences or identities diverge from the writer’s own. They will focus LGBTQIA+ representation in writing and publishing and intersections between race, ethnicity, religion, ability, body type, etc and will discuss the ethics of researching and writing beyond our direct experience, including the use, or not, of sensitivity readers.
4pm-6pm: Slow Session in Fitz’s Pub
With Charles Tunes from Doolin, bring your instruments, all welcome to join
7pm- Film Screening:
Location: The Attic
The Swallow by Tadgh O’Sullivan and featuring Brenda Fricker