Madeleine D'Arcy is graduating from University College Cork this spring with an MA in creative writing.
She was part of the inaugural class of the course, which she did in one year but is also offered on a two-year part time basis.
“I was very late coming back to the MA. I actually did law in UCC from 1979 to 1982, that’s a long time ago, and I qualified as a solicitor,” she said. “Even though I’m 54, I’m young in writing.”
She worked in criminal legal aid and legal publishing in England before moving back to Ireland with her husband after she had a child.
She became seriously ill with stage IV endometriosis, and her son was diagnosed with a learning difficulty at around the same time. That’s when she stopped working and started writing.
In 2010, still writing but disheartened because she had no money, she won two Hennessy Literary Awards for her work. She was inspired to keep going.
“I had been learning the craft and techniques of fiction on my own, just learning, going to workshops, trying to get better. I wanted to challenge myself.”
She decided to do the MA in creative writing after a friend told her about a scholarship at UCC. The scholarship covered her fees of €6,000, so her only expense was buying books.
D’Arcy says the course exposed her to things she would never have tried on her own. She wrote a radio drama for her thesis. Course modules included poetry, ghost and horror writing as well as memoir and food writing.
One module focused on the business side of writing. A variety of writers and people in the publishing business, including author John Banville, were invited to speak to the class.
“I think [the course] gave me more confidence in myself. Writers get very lonely and very worried about what they do, and it’s just fantastic to have that continual support,” she says.
After graduation, she plans on cleaning up her radio drama and writing the first draft of a novel.
“I hope [having done the course] adds years to my life so that when I’m 80, I’ll still have some brains going,” she said.
