"Finding Home" Creative Writing Workshop with Emer Martin

Lost and Found: Writing Identity, Displacement, and Discovery

A Creative Writing Workshop Inspired by The Namesake*

In this creative writing workshop, participants will delve into themes of identity, displacement, cultural conflict, family ties, and the weighty expectations we place on love, inspired by Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. Through a series of focused writing exercises, we will craft fresh, emotionally layered narratives that explore the complexities of belonging and self-invention. Writers will engage in structured prompts designed to evoke rich, original detail, dynamic dialogue, and powerful subtext, drawing from personal experience or deepening the development of characters in their current projects. You do not need prior knowledge of the book before the workshop but we will mine it for themes. The session will feature brief discussions on craft techniques, followed by dedicated writing time and optional group sharing. By the end of the workshop, participants will have generated compelling, resonant pieces and gained a deeper insight into how personal and cultural histories shape character and story.

NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.

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Emer Martin is a Dubliner who has lived in Paris, London, the Middle East, and various places in the US. Thirsty Ghosts is her most recent novel published in 2023. The Cruelty Men, her most recent novel is published by Lilliput Press and has been nominated for Irish Novel of the Year 2019. Her first novel won Book of the Year 1996 in her native Ireland at the prestigious Listowel Writers’ Week. Houghton Mifflin released in the U.S. in 1997. , her second novel was published internationally in 1999.

Emer studied painting in New York and has had two sell-out solo shows of her paintings at the Origin Gallery in Harcourt St, Dublin.

Her third novel , was published in the UK and Ireland March 07, and released in the U.S. 2014. She released her first children's book in 2013. is a Halloween book for children released in 2016. Her latest children book The Pig who Danced was released in 2017.

She completed her third short film . She produced Irvine Welsh’s directorial debut in 2007. Emer was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000. She now lives between the depths of Silicon Valley, CA and the jungles of Co. Meath, Ireland.

Host or Publisher The New York Irish Center