25 April,
Workshop /
Lucy Caldwell: Writing the Moments that Matter
Saturday, 25 April 2026, 11:00am
O’Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway / €65
Book NowRobert McLiam Wilson says in Eureka Street that “All stories are love stories”. If we think about how coming-of-age happens for us all at multiple times, in multiple ways, and isn’t a straightforward trajectory – could all stories, in a way, be coming-of-age stories? Do we ever truly come of age? What might it mean to come of age in your sixties, seventies – on your hundredth birthday? What does it mean as a human to embrace change, or to resist it?
In this workshop, we’ll look at how to use pivotal moments in our lives to inspire our fiction – from the richnesses of childhood to the complex and painful times of growth we all must go through as adults. We’ll find wild creative freedom and inspiration in the power of myths that take us through transformation and transfiguration.
It will be a welcoming, intimate and exhilarating space where we mine and share our own experience, learn invaluable practical tips and techniques, and have lots of room to play, letting our imaginations run wild, going away with plenty of templates for stories to write.
Lucy was born in Belfast in 1981 and is the author of four novels, several stage plays and radio dramas and three previous collections of short stories: Multitudes, Intimacies and Openings. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, she was the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories in 2019. She won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2021 for All the People Were Mean and Bad. Other awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Walter Scott Prize and the 2022 E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.
Event Location
O’Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway
Book Now Back to What's OnStep free venue with accessible toilet facilities. Accessible parking is located on campus in front of the Quadrangle Building four minutes from the venue. There is no Loop system. HEPA filter
will be in use for workshop spaces.