Banshee Press: Generative Writing Workshop
Join us at the DC Writers' Salon for a generative writing workshop with three acclaimed Irish writers connected to award-winning Banshee Press, one of Ireland's most innovative and exciting small presses.
WHEN: Friday, May 22 | 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: DC Writers' Salon (1807 18th St NW, Washington, DC)
TICKETS: Free with reservation
Eimear Ryan and Jessica Traynor are both editors at Banshee Press, publishing award-winning, contemporary and accessible new writing from Ireland. Eimear is also a memoirist and novelist, and Jessica is a poet and essayist. Together with Bebe Ashley, whose second collection with Banshee Press, Harbour Doubts, won the Ivan Juritz Prize, they are offering a workshop in which each writer will set a prompt based on their own experience and expertise.
This workshop will be suitable for attendees who are comfortable working with writing prompts and sharing their work and experience with a group.
Eimear Ryan, the Managing Editor of Banshee Press, is the author of the novel Holding Her Breath (Sandycove 2021, Mariner Books 2022) and the memoir The Grass Ceiling: On Being a Woman in Sport (Sandycove 2023), which won Sports Book of the Year at the 2023 Irish Book Awards. She has also been shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards, the Kate O’Brien Award, and the John McGahern Annual Book Prize. Other writing has appeared in Granta, Winter Papers, The Dublin Review and The Stinging Fly. From Co. Tipperary, she now lives in Cork city, where she lectures in creative writing at University College Cork.
Jessica Traynor, the Poetry Editor at Banshee Press, is a poet, essayist and librettist. Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award. The Quick (Dedalus Press, 2018) was an Irish Times book of the year. Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe, 2022) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and a Guardian Best Summer Read of 2022. She was the 2023 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. Other awards include the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize, the Listowel Poetry Prize, and Hennessy New Writer of the Year. A new collection, New Arcana, is forthcoming from Bloodaxe Books in 2025.
Bebe Ashley lives in Northern Ireland and works at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. Her debut collection Gold Light Shining (Banshee Press, 2020) was selected for the Arts Council’s Read Mór programme in 2022. Her work is most recently published in Granta, The Stinging Fly, bath magg, and Modern Poetry in Translation. In 2023, Bebe received the Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment (Text) and in 2024, she received a British Council Fellowship.
Author photoby Matthew Thompson
About Banshee Press
Banshee Press is a small independent Irish publisher, founded in 2015 and currently run by award-winning writers Eimear Ryan and Jessica Traynor. To date the press has published ten books of fiction. Our authors include Bebe Ashley, Dylan Brennan, Lucy Sweeney Byrne, Gustav Parker Hibbett, Claire-Lise Kieffer, Tim MacGabhann, Mary Morrissy, Billy Ramsell, Deirdre Sullivan, Rosamund Taylor and David Toms. We have recently celebrated our tenth anniversary, and the 20th issue of our diverse literary journal Banshee, which published flash fiction, poetry, flash fiction and essays.
In 2024 and 2025, Banshee Press was selected as the island of Ireland winner in the Small Press of the Year Award at the Nibbies, The Bookseller’s annual publishing awards. Banshee Press authors have recently been listed for or won such awards as the Edge Hill Prize, the Kate O'Brien Award, the Butler Literary Award, the John McGahern Annual Book Prize, the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize, the Polari First Book Prize, the Ivan Juritz Prize, the Laurel Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the John Pollard International Poetry Prize.
About DC Writers' Salon
The Salon helps us make space and time for what we love to do: write. But more than that, it invites us to engage with the otherwise solo, and sometimes grueling, process of writing in a way that's more connected, accountable, and encouraging.
Anne Lamott says, "an occupational hazard of writing is that you'll have bad days. You feel not only totally alone but also that everyone else is at a party. But if you talk to other people who write, you remember that this feeling is part of the process, that it's inevitable."
We can't write for you, but we will help you feel less alone. We hope you'll find what you need to keep at it. Join us!
