A Reading of seven short plays, devised and scripted by teenage writers took place on Thursday 29th March on the Abbey stage.The Reading was the culmination of a long-term project, in collaboration with the Abbey Theatre, and the sixth year Fighting Words volunteers have mentored a group of young playwrights.
Our first workshop with Children in Hospital Ireland was full of creativity and fun!
On Friday, March 9th author Sarah Webb and illustrator Philip Kennedy and the Children in Hospital Ireland team came together for a magical morning, helping young authors at Our Lady's Children's Hospital Crumlin create a brand new story for World Book Day.
RTE's Nationwide featured Fighting Words on a recent episode! The piece featured the launch of The Search at our Dublin centre and with staff and volunteers visiting from Fighting Words Belfast & Fighting Words Wicklow (with contributions from Fighting Words Cork). The Search is a book written by four primary school classes from around Ireland as part of The Big Picture initiative with the Laureate na nOg.
The Nationwide piece also featured our new workshops in Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow as well as interviews with Fighting Words co-founder Roddy Doyle and Laureate na nOg PJ Lynch!
Both Fighting Words North West and Fighting Words Wicklow have been featured in the local press recently - in the Wicklow People and the Donegal Post.
Fighting Words has expanded to different locations around the country in the last three years, offering free creative writing workshops to children and young people in Belfast, Cork, Galway, Mayo, the Northwest (Donegal/Sligo/Leitrim) and Wicklow - with more locations on the way!
At our recent 9th birthday party, we celebrated nine years of incredible stories and creativity, all made possible by our amazing volunteer writing tutors and story illustrators.
Our longest-serving volunteers were presented with beautiful commemorative medals made by silversmith Séamus Gill and based on Jim Fitzpatrick's specially desgined Fighting Words logo.
For more information about Séamus Gill's work, visit http://www.seamusgill.com/index.html
A gripping thriller called The Search, written and illustrated by almost 100 Irish school children at Fighting Words workshops across the island of Ireland, was launched at Fighting Words in Dublin on Friday, 26 January 2018.
The Search was created as part of The Big Picture project, an initiative of Laureate na nÓg PJ Lynch in collaboration with Fighting Words and Fighting Words Belfast.
It is with great sadness that we mourn our wonderful friend and former colleague Brian Ruane. Brian was a lifelong advocate for education and human rights, who did so much for so many. We offer our deepest sympathies to his wife Beth and daughter Saorla and the rest of Brian's family. We mourn together with them and Brian's wide circle of friends and colleagues from St Patrick's College/DCU, Trócaire and Amnesty International, among many others. May he rest in peace.
Programmes resume in the Dublin centre on January 8th.
Fighting Words launched their new book, Dublin In The Coming Times on Wednesday 29 November 2017 in Dublin City Library & Archive to a packed audience of aspiring and established writers and illustrators. The book features a selection of short stories, poetry and prose from members of Dublin City Libraries Creative Writing groups alongside writings from well known established authors.
In his 1893 collection, ‘The Rose’, WB Yeats included the poem ‘To Ireland in the Coming Times’. Borrowing its title, Dublin in the Coming Times was a free, citywide programme of creative writing in which Dubliners, young and old, created their own stories and poems as they looked to the future of their city.
We recently had the opportunity to work with writers from over 20 countries at Failte Isteach Tyrrelstown!
The group meets weekly for conversational English and on 29 November they wrote their first story together. They are supported by a great team of volunteers and by Fingal County Council at Tyrrelstown Community Centre.
The authors came from Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Poland, Moldova, Russia, Spain, India, Brazil. Albania, Libya, Sweden, Dominican Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and of course Ireland.
