Experience a short writing program on magic realism with prerecorded video lectures, reading and writing assignments, which you can complete at your own pace. Led by Jan Carson, a prominent Northern Irish novelist and short story writer, this program delves into the essence of magic realism, exploring its history, contemporary celebrated writers, and equips you with the tools to write your own magic realist short story.
In an easy-to-follow talk, Carson will guide you through the development and writing process of your very own piece of magic realism. The lectures are informative, engaging and offer plenty of fun-filled learning. This writing course caters to people with vivid imaginations, boundless creativity, and an inclination to portray the world in a slightly unconventional way. It is suitable for writers of all levels, including beginners looking to explore their writing style.
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in East Belfast. Her debut novel Malcolm Orange Disappears and short story collection, Children’s Children, were published by Liberties Press, Dublin. A micro-fiction collection, Postcard Stories was published by the Emma Press in 2017. Jan’s novel The Fire Starters was published by Doubleday in April 2019 and subsequently won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. She has been shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize and in 2016 won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize.
Her work has appeared in journals such as Banshee, The Tangerine, Winter Papers and Harper’s Bazaar and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She is currently working on her first television screenplay for BBC3 and has recently presented a radio documentary for BBC Radio 4. In 2018 Jan was the Irish Writers Centre’s inaugural Roaming Writer in Residence on the trains of Ireland. She is the 2019 recipient of the Jack Harte Bursary. Jan has curated the CS Lewis Festival, the Hillsborough Festival of Literature and Ideas and the inaugural Belfast Lit Crawl. She specialises in arts engagement with older and people living with Dementia and has received funding through Queen’s University Belfast to carry out a research project into the representation of Dementia in literature. She has facilitated creative writing workshops for the University of Ulster, Irish Writers Centre, Dublin, John Hewitt Summer School, West Cork Literary Festival and many other universities, festivals and organisations.
