Master Class: Descriptive Writing in Memoir and Personal Essay Writing with David McLoghlin
Master Class: Descriptive Writing in Memoir and Personal Essay Writing with David McLoghlin
2 Sessions: Saturday, March 6 +13
11:00am-1:00pm ET
David McLoghlin
David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet, and a writer of memoir and personal essay. His third book, Crash Centre (2024) was shortlisted for the 2025 Pigott Poetry Prize. He is at work on an immersive sports narrative about the legacy of his grandfather, Eddie Hackett, "the father of Irish golf design," and his journey into the strange world of Irish golf as a complete novice.
Across hundreds of hours of craft workshops, it has been my experience that creative nonfiction consists of three forms of descriptive writing:
Scenes, where time slows down, giving us immersive sensory detail, conflict and dialogue
“Summaries,” scene-adjacent passages with a generalized quality, where we describe recurrent patterns across time. Summaries help us to glide across two years in a paragraph, bridging to a scene where we might crystallize a vital moment in three pages
Exposition, also known as reflection, which is where the writer explains, and comments on the action, providing essential information that moves the story forward, and links scenes together.
Scenes and summary are where we “show,” whereas in exposition, we “tell.” Scenes often tell the core story of the past, whereas exposition is the voice of the adult narrator reflecting on the past. Learning how to identify your principle story points (or scenes) will help you to structure your story. As you develop and improve your scenes, you will also develop a better sense of what they mean for you, and how to link them together. This knowledge will help you to develop and improve your narrative voice, which is built from well-employed exposition.
This masterclass is structured around reading short extracts, and gives highly practical tips for how to execute these three descriptive categories via in-class writing exercises that improve our own craft learnings. This class is for all levels. While attendees may be at the beginning or end of a project, all that is required is an interest in writing memoir or personal essay.
Highlights:
You’ll learn to identify scenes, summary and exposition as you read the work of others as well as your own writing
You’ll learn how to write better scenes, exposition and summaries
As a result you will get a better sense of the story you are trying to tell, which will help you improve your narrative voice as a whole.
This class has 1 full and 2 partial scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, February 26.
David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet and creative writing facilitator in memoir and poetry whose writing has been broadcast on WYNC’s Radiolab, appeared in film and published in journals of note on both sides of the Atlantic such as Poetry Foundation, Literary Hub, The Stinging Fly, Magma, Poetry Ireland Review, and many more. His three books are Crash Centre (May 2024), shortlisted for the 2025 Pigott Poetry Prize in association with Listowel Writers’ Week, Waiting for Saint Brendan and Other Poems (2012), and Santiago Sketches (2017), all with Salmon Poetry. Pamphlets / chapbooks include Suns (Cardboard House Press, 2017) and The Magic Door (Blue Canary Press, Milwaukee, 1993).
In 2025 he was awared an Arts Council Literary Bursary. In 2023 he received a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship and was one of two poets to represent Ireland on the Versopolis European poetry platform. He won the Open category of the Voices of War International Poetry Competition in 2018 and was a finalist in the 2015 Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize (now The Moth International Poetry Prize). In 2008, he received second prize in The Patrick Kavanagh Awards, and in 2006 received a major Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon Literature Bursary.
