Want to tell the story of your life? Cork author wants to help you write it all down

Is there a book in you, specifically a memoir that captures a thread or a theme in your life?

Writing a book may sound ambitious, but poet David McLoghlin says the participants on his writing courses don’t all wish to get published.

They simply have a story to tell, they want to be heard, and they enjoy the collaborative effort at workshops where writing craft is taught and company is guaranteed.

David is returning to Hollyhill Library in April, where he will give a course on life writing/memoir.

He is an award-winning poet whose most recent collection, Crash Centre, published by Salmon Poetry in 2024, was shortlisted for the 2025 Pigott Prize.

David describes himself as a freelance teaching writer, poet, and creative non-fiction writer. Originally from Dublin and now living in Ballincollig with his American wife and child, he has an MFA in creative writing from New York University, where he has also taught.

He currently facilitates creative writing classes with the Heritage Council, Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools’ Programme, and the Centre for Fiction in New York.

“Cork is full of poets and other kinds of writers,” says David. “There is a great literary scene here.

“There’s a real community of writers from classes and workshops where people share their writing and get feedback.

“Anyone can come to my course at Hollyhill Library. It tends to be beginners but anyone can benefit from it. There will be up to 12 people on the course.”

At the course, there will be generative writing exercises, a craft-of-memoir component, and an opportunity for the students to share any writing done during the 90-minute long classes.

Creative non-fiction is popular at the moment. “It’s like fiction in the sense that scenes are very important,” said David. “The reader should feel they are actually there in the room.

“I’m also teaching voice, so people can make sense of the past.

“There will be a class about trying to write an impactful scene in life writing. Another class will cultivate the reflective voice.

“In cinema, people talk about the ‘through line’, what you choose to write about from your life. Our lives can be chaotic and messy. You have to tease out a narrative thread in a piece of writing.

“We all have many experiences, but what is it that we want to talk about?”

Is there a tendency towards the confessional in this type of writing?

“Yeah, people are writing about personal experience,” replied David. “It could be happy, sad, funny or poetic. It all depends on what people feel like sharing.

“In the past, people’s first novel would often be seen as autobiographical but then, at a certain point, memoir has started to become a genre with a lot of focus on it.”

It goes back to New Journalism, an American literary movement in the 1960s and 1970s with proponents such as Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion.

“In the New Journalism, the narrator becomes a character in the story being told,” explained David, “I’m very interested in that. It has given birth to creative non-fiction.”

Asked who his favourite creative non-fiction writers are, David cites American author and civil rights activist, James Baldwin, mentioning his collection of essays, Notes Of A Native Son.

He also likes the work of Albanian writer, Lea Ypi, whose book, Free, is about making sense of the end of communism in her country.

While there might be a perception that writing classes are geared towards garnering elusive publishing deals, David says this isn’t necessarily the case.

“A lot of people just want to do classes,” he said. “They’re very good for you because there’s the therapeutic element and the literary aspect. I do classes for both reasons.

“I want to be published, but I also want to write because it’s good for me. Even if people were never to publish anything, I think it’s important for people’s mental health to make sense of their lives.”

Some people are interested in genealogy and telling a family story. “I wrote a memoir about living in the US. It wasn’t published,” said David.

His collection, Crash Centre, is about being a survivor of sexual abuse. He was abused at secondary school and has written about what happens when grooming, gaslighting, and abuse masquerade as trust in a relationship between a teenage boy and a charismatic literary monk.

The book explores questions about mentorship and betrayal, trauma, memory and erasure as well as paths to recovery.

Was it difficult to write?

“In a sense, it was. I think poetry is a very good genre to write about traumatic events because of the imagery and the craft of it,” said David.

“The first draft is all emotion and is raw. But as you edit it, the poet takes over from the person who experienced the abuse. In a sense, that protects you or it creates a container for the trauma.”

Asked if he worries about AI taking over people’s jobs, David says he does but he doesn’t really use it himself.

“I think AI could have a huge impact and benefits for many different spheres such as medicine, but there are always going to be good books written by people.”

That’s reassuring for everyone who appreciates the written word and not the material of some bot.

The four-week course in Life Writing/Memoir takes place at Hollyhill Library on April 9, 16, 23 and 30 from 12.30pm to 2pm. To book, contact Hollyhill Library on 021 4924945 or hollyhill_library@corkcity.ie.