Big Smoke Writing Factory
There's no fire without smoke...... Big Smoke Writing Factory offers creative writing classes, workshops and resources at 7 Lower Hatch Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Course list spring 2010
Next open day: February 16th, 5.30-8pm.
-- Courses starting soon: Beginning To Write; Line Production; Stand-up Comedy.
Looking for a gift for the writer in your life? Gift certificates are now available!
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Blow out those candles!
Big Smoke would like to wish its very wonderful patron a Happy Birthday!
Labels: factory
Sunday, 24 January 2010
From Poetry to Chick Lit at Big Smoke...
A terrific time was had by all at this evening's Poetry Saloon!
Next Saturday, January 30th, as our guest workshop in Writing A Bestseller: How To Successfully Write and Publish Chick Lit is taking place, we will once again have members of the Big Smoke team on hand to take registrations for upcoming courses and answer queries between 1-3pm. Feel free to come along, and take a look at our course list to see what's starting in February!
Next Saturday, January 30th, as our guest workshop in Writing A Bestseller: How To Successfully Write and Publish Chick Lit is taking place, we will once again have members of the Big Smoke team on hand to take registrations for upcoming courses and answer queries between 1-3pm. Feel free to come along, and take a look at our course list to see what's starting in February!
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Open Registration Days
Interested in signing up for one of our upcoming courses? We'll be holding several open registration days before the start of our winter/spring term.
Thursday 14th January, 5.30pm-8.30pm
Sunday 17th January, 2pm-6pm
Wednesday 20th January, 5.30pm-8pm
(Sign-ups will also be available during the Poetry Saloon, Sunday 24th January, 4pm-6pm.)
You can register for courses (please note that we can only accept cash or cheque at open days - credit card payments can be processed only through Paypal at present), or just discuss with one of us what kind of course might suit you best. As ever, there will be tea!
Find us at 7 Lower Hatch St, Dublin 2.
Thursday 14th January, 5.30pm-8.30pm
Sunday 17th January, 2pm-6pm
Wednesday 20th January, 5.30pm-8pm
(Sign-ups will also be available during the Poetry Saloon, Sunday 24th January, 4pm-6pm.)
You can register for courses (please note that we can only accept cash or cheque at open days - credit card payments can be processed only through Paypal at present), or just discuss with one of us what kind of course might suit you best. As ever, there will be tea!
Find us at 7 Lower Hatch St, Dublin 2.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Writing Saloon: A Salon with an extra 'o'!
So what else has been going on at BIG SMOKE lately apart from preparing for open days and getting ready for our 2010 courses?
(Click for larger image) Pictured: James Stafford and Hannah Carabine
An occasional event linked to the Writing Train workshops, The Writing Saloon met last month in Yvonne Cullen's house. We had turf fires (along with fires in our heads) going strong in two rooms, all evening, and such a staggering assortment of party food that we simply had to break for two indoor picnics instead of one. File under 'a tough job but someone's got to do it!' All told, it was a lovely evening and there'll definitely be more of them for Writing Train members in 2010. Yvonne's already mulling over the form these will take, and reckons some will be workshops like last weekend's event, while others - inspired by what she's heard of the artist Louise Bourgeois's open houses in Manhattan - may just be Reading Picnics. Writing Saloon. "Salon with an extra 'o'," indeed!
(Click for larger image) Pictured: James Stafford and Hannah Carabine An occasional event linked to the Writing Train workshops, The Writing Saloon met last month in Yvonne Cullen's house. We had turf fires (along with fires in our heads) going strong in two rooms, all evening, and such a staggering assortment of party food that we simply had to break for two indoor picnics instead of one. File under 'a tough job but someone's got to do it!' All told, it was a lovely evening and there'll definitely be more of them for Writing Train members in 2010. Yvonne's already mulling over the form these will take, and reckons some will be workshops like last weekend's event, while others - inspired by what she's heard of the artist Louise Bourgeois's open houses in Manhattan - may just be Reading Picnics. Writing Saloon. "Salon with an extra 'o'," indeed!
Labels: factory
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Happy holidays from Big Smoke!
Friday, 20 November 2009
This week's Friday Factory...
We like record factories and also, it follows, Factory Records (check out the link for an interesting archive).
BIG SMOKE wishes you all a good weekend!
BIG SMOKE wishes you all a good weekend!
Labels: factory
Friday, 13 November 2009
Friday 13th...
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Congratulations are in order....
Alongside the great writing going on in and out of all of our Big Smoke Writing Factory classes and courses this term, graduates of Yvonne’s Advanced courses are doing really great things right now. The very fine new novelist Yvonne Cassidy is working towards the Summer 2010 publication date of “The Other Boy”, her first of two novels with UK publisher Hodder. And Cliona O’Connell, a member of the Writing Train workshops, had three of her lovely poems in the Tribune’s New Irish Writing pages last Sunday. In case you missed them, here is one of them again, in all its beauty. If you ever ask yourself why you want to go on working with words, read something as good as this. (Or rifle through the Big Smoke archives and re-read this : )
Dinner with Old Friends on the Summer Solstice
Cliona O'Connell
At the last reading with the Russian gypsy cards
they predicted my heart would be ignited by love.
Now, as the host clears the dinner things,
I lay down the cards again,
anchors and knotted ropes.
I could tell them that when I woke this morning
I couldn’t remember what year it was.
I could tell them that our grief is our own.
I could tell them, but it’s late
and they’d only tell me
to get over myself;
so slowly I turn away from these things
and tilt my head toward the light
like the earth on the longest day,
love on the shortest night
Labels: factory
Friday, 23 October 2009
This week's Friday Factory...
People who like wisdom with their food will like fortune cookie factories (to visit when next in San Francisco, or to admire from afar!).
Labels: factory
Monday, 5 October 2009
Big Smoke in the Irish Times Magazine
"As they prepare to fire up the furnaces, their confidence in the venture is infectious. Arts funding may be thin on the ground, but somehow that doesn’t seem as important as boundless passion – and pots of tea."
Tea is in fact our secret. The very lovely Grace Garvey spoke to us for the Irish Times Magazine - go take a look!
Labels: factory
Friday, 2 October 2009
This week's Friday Factory...
We here at Big Smoke are fans of tea, as you may have noticed, and what makes tea a more wondrous thing? Biscuits, of course! So this week we are appreciating biscuit factories. Image: Jacob's Biscuit Factory, c. 1900. National Archives.
Labels: factory
Friday, 25 September 2009
This week's Friday Factory...
... well, it being a BIG SMOKE READING NIGHT tonight, it would be remiss of us not to have writing factories as among our very favouritest of factories.
Drop in any time between 6.30pm-9.30pm. Entry is free. All are welcome.
A selected group of writers from long-running advanced workshops will be reading their work. Refreshments and music will be provided - just bring yourself!
With a Hop, Skip and Jump (Gramophone DJ set): Big Smoke's favourite 78s played by DJ Sartorial James.
Find us on Google Maps.
Find the event on Facebook.
Drop in any time between 6.30pm-9.30pm. Entry is free. All are welcome.
A selected group of writers from long-running advanced workshops will be reading their work. Refreshments and music will be provided - just bring yourself!
With a Hop, Skip and Jump (Gramophone DJ set): Big Smoke's favourite 78s played by DJ Sartorial James.
Find us on Google Maps.
Find the event on Facebook.
Labels: factory
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
On the Big Smoke gramophone at the moment...
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Birds on the wire...
Stories we are liking at Big Smoke today: a musician who composed a piece based on the position of birds sitting on telephone wires.
Labels: factory
Friday, 18 September 2009
This week's Friday Factory
We here at BIG SMOKE are generally a positive bunch. And we love factories, we do. Except for factories we dislike.
And this week, all of us (but mostly fabulous Big Smoke team member Yvonne Cullen) are disliking factories which make leaky teapots.
We know, you see, that tea is utterly essential to the creative process. (This is our secret. Shhh, don't tell anyone.) We also know that teapot-makers must want to bring joy into the world, and ensure that tragic spilling is kept to a minimum rather than being a fact of life. They must understand the need for tea, but are somehow being thwarted by the Powers That Be.
We don't know where these leaky-teapot factories are. We don't know who might be responsible for the flaw in standard teapot-design that leads to leaking. But we don't like it, teapot factories, and we're on to you...
Labels: factory
Friday, 11 September 2009
This week's Friday Factory...
This week Big Smoke is appreciating glass blowing factories and the beautiful things that emerge from such places...
Labels: factory
Friday, 4 September 2009
This week's Friday Factory...
Our favourite factories include typewriter factories. This image is from The Virtual Typewriter Museum.
You may also want to take a look at information on Typewriter factories in the US or the Fresh Ribbon blog.
BIG SMOKE wishes you a good weekend!
You may also want to take a look at information on Typewriter factories in the US or the Fresh Ribbon blog.
BIG SMOKE wishes you a good weekend!
Labels: factory
Friday, 28 August 2009
This week's Friday Factory
Friday, 21 August 2009
This week's Friday Factory
Other factories we like include chocolate factories...
(BIG SMOKE regrets that we are not staffed with Oompa-Loompas at this present time.)
"An important room, this!" cried Mr Wonka, taking a bunch of keys from his pocket and slipping one into the keyhole of the door. "This is the nerve centre of the whole factory, the heart of the whole business! And so beautiful! I insist upon my rooms being beautiful! I can't abide ugliness in factories! In we go, then! But do be careful, my dear children! Don't lose your heads! Don't get over-excited! Keep very calm!" - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
(BIG SMOKE regrets that we are not staffed with Oompa-Loompas at this present time.)
Labels: factory
Monday, 17 August 2009
Our favourite quote of the moment...
... here at BIG SMOKE is from writer Sadie Jones in yesterday's Sunday Times:
"You can’t control the spark, but you can control the match."
Labels: factory
Friday, 14 August 2009
This week's Friday Factory
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Today BIG SMOKE is appreciating...
... the politically comedic/comedically political stylings of Abie Philbin Bowman. From a warm-up for his Eco-Friendly Jihad show...
Labels: factory
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
What BIG SMOKE is looking at today...
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