Teaching Creative Writing: Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Theorist and Practitioner

Abstract

This article reviews Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s career as a teacher of creative writing at University College Dublin and demonstrates her formidable contribution to the theory and practice of creative writing teaching. It draws from the 2011 symposium which she organised on the teaching and learning of creative writing in Ireland, and the subsequent publication Imagination in the Classroom, which she co-edited. Together the symposium and publication can be seen as the context in which the teaching of creative writing in Irish higher-level institutions assumed the mantle of an autonomous, professional discipline.