Meet Your Instructor
Breda Shannon lives on the farm where she was reared in the midwest of Ireland in north County Clare on the green borders of the rolling wildlife-rich high limestone hills and sprawling rock plains of the Burren. The Cottage at Clifden is not far from the stunning, legendary limestone mountain of Mullagh Mor; inspiration to generation upon generation of poets, writers, artists, painters, farmers and travellers. She left this childhood home at 12 to attend a boarding school run by The Sisters of Mercy overlooking the sea on Galway Bay, followed by taking her degree at the University of Limerick (UL); the Limerick of Frank McCourt fame; the great Irish memorist, to a job in London in marketing departments, where she spent almost a decade, loving London but longing not to be in marketing.
Returning to Ireland in the late 1990’s she worked as a freelance writer, book and theatre reviewer whilst living on the edge of the Atlantic’s jagged West Cork coast where her proximity to the ocean landed her a job as a fishing correspondent for Ireland’s fishing newspapers and magazines that helped keep her afloat as she began the study of writing craft and her own writing journey.
Running creative writing classes at libraries and other educational institutions, over the years, Breda found her way to memoir. Teaching and facilitating in libraries meant that she came in touch with many, many people who wanted to write their own stories, simply to record a life or analyse its meaning and to leave a manuscript of their personal and/or ancestral journey for posterity. She found that she loved other people’s stories and felt enormously gratified in assisting to bring their lived experiences to life in writing. In her courses and workshops, she has helped numerous inexperienced and more experienced writers harness imagination, find theme and write memoir in creative prose authentic to their journey. Teaching Creative Writing and Memoir Writing eventually led Breda to ghostwriting the memoirs of others; people who either didn’t have the time to write, or the interest in writing, but wanted to leave a written record of their impression on the world and their transformation in it.
Twenty years after leaving her childhood home, she returned to live in the house where she had been brought up, built in 1920 by her grandparents and where her father and his brother had been raised. Here with her husband, she raised their son and ran a small poultry-farming enterprise, continuing her freelance writing and facilitation of creative writing classes and workshops. It is from this home, called The Cottage at Clifden, that Breda provides memoir writing retreats and memoir writing support for beginner and more experienced writers on their memoir writing journeys.
Breda’s Approach to Memoir Writing
Always in love with words and ideas and wanting to find out how great writers achieve great works of art using words, Breda has been on a long odyssey studying the work of some of these writers and examining their craft. Writing is both an art and a craft; meaning a little learning of the devices that great writers use to make stories come alive on the page and survive centuries or even millennia, is worth the effort for our own memoir writing. Memorists need to use the same tropes of the trade as novelists do to breathe life into their narratives. Breda approaches memoir writing tuition firstly and primarily from the writing aspect, especially for those at the beginning of their writing journey; her motto is ‘Work on your Writing before worrying about Plot or Story Structure’.
On her path, Breda was lucky to study with the great Irish contemporary poet, writer and teacher Dave Lordan. Her teaching approach is inspired by his emphasis on examining great writing for craft, finding theme and searching for your own unique voice. With a little learning of the craft and commitment to the writing, we can leave behind a memoir of our examined and interesting existence that is well-written and gives shape and meaning to our journey. And our readers will appreciate it. Structure is important for memoir, and in Breda’s classes or retreats, we examine structure after we have worked on elevating the writing by instruction on craft and writing practice. The memoirist differs from the writer of fiction. The memorist already has a life arc, so it is easier to find structure for them, though finding theme and structuring the arc is still required.
Memoir Writing Courses are available for individuals and groups in-person and online. Retreats are held for six-day periods, or longer by arrangement, at Breda’s home in Clifden, three kilometres from the traditional village of Corofin; the gateway to the world-famous lunar Burren landscape, Cliffs of Moher, and Doolin, renowned for Irish Traditional Music. The Cottage is within a kilometre of Lake Inchiquin, whose shoreline walk through an ancient woodland path is a magical experience you must enjoy on a writing retreat here.
As a beginner memoir writer, you will learn how to use imagery and other story devices in your writing and examine how some of the greats of the past achieved such impact in their work. You will look at some of the best writers in memoir genre to see how they do it. In her writing classes and writing retreats, Breda shows you how to actively read good writing for big tips on how to write. She shows you how to elevate your narrative by using imagery and story craft and provides you with the inspiration to carry on with your writing after a course or a retreat has ended.
For more experienced writers who have already developed craft, Breda offers facilitation and feedback for work-in-progress and tutoring if required, online or in-person. For anyone with a work-in-progress or first draft memoir, she offers a reading and feedback service with editing advice online or in-person.
As an experienced ghostwriter of memoirs, Breda offers a complete ghostwriting service for those not interested in the writing process but who have a story they want to tell about their own unique life; this can be progressed in-person or online or a combination of both.
"Memoir writing isn't therapy—it's better than therapy."
- Meredith Maran