An Enriching Writers Workshop in a Thrilling Setting
Welcome to "Love Comes in at the Eye" on the Wild Atlantic Way!
“Love Comes in at the Eye." Our workshop leaves you “fizzing with bog energy,” oas ne of our writers said in 2025. We don’t think she was referring only to the "uisce beatha, Irish for water of life, or whiskey. Though our workshop is named for W.B. Yeat’s "The Drinking Song Poem."
What distinguishes our workshop from others is that it is packed with energy. There is the energy of our instructors, Matthew Klam and Jacki Lyden, back as a repeat pair due to what they once called “popular demand.”
There is also the fact that, value for money, this the best workshop out there. For seven days of instruction, we have roughly 27-28 hours of class time, not counting some private one-on-one time or our community reading. Most workshops have less then 20 hours in class. Our fee is substantially less than other venues; the trip to Europe is even closer, and the local language is English. (Ostensibly.) Our writers are not segregated from the community but woven into it by dint of the fact that Jacki is teaching near her ancestral Irish hometown, and has been, since 2017. She has been a part of the artistic community in Clifden since her young adulthood. Thus we are in countless ways at home in the community—from a walk with an archaeologist, to the lore of Renvyle House, a broadcast on Connemara Community Radio and other delights. Yeats himself honeymooned at Renvyle House, built by his friend Oliver St. John Gogarty, whose family owned Renvyle House.
Co-leader Matthew Klam had never visited Ireland until 2025. Then he saw: a donkey, the mountains, the sea, some works by writers named Wilde, Rooney, Keegan, and Joyce, heard the music, tasted the food, and .. thought there might be something to that uisce beatha.
Matt and Jacki have between them decades of storytelling and story-creating experience—Jacki as a longtime host and correspondent for NPR, a memoirist, and Matt as a novelist and teacher and workshop leader for decades. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and he also writes nonfiction for publications such as the New York Times magazine.
This workshop is open to writers who have serious writing practices, or are published, or who we feel would fit in well with a challenging and delightful group.
And why is “Love Comes in at the Eye” so successful? Because, it’s a labor of love.
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How Does This Work?
Please submit 20 pages of a work to Jacki and Matt (unless you are a returning writer.) If you are a new to the workshop, there’s a $100 reading fee.
The total package price upon acceptance is $4250. This covers the majority of all of it-- your tuition and lodging, nearly all your transportation, (not airfare) and most of your meals except for five dinners out and a few lunches. Elegant opening and closing night dinners are covered. Also covered is an archaeological hike, and the community reading. So what’s not covered? Say you want to take a taxi into Clifden or Renvyle one morning, or do some shopping. Any ad hoc thing you want to do is on you. So’s your bar tab!
Class is each afternoon. We break for lunch about 3pm in the hotel/ They set us up in the solarium or outdoors. (Breakfast is an enormous smorgasboard, included.)
We'll send a coach for those who fly in to Shannon International Airport, on May 24, and we send a coach back on the last day, June 1, which is basically a travel day. Renvyle Hotel is at the tip of the Renvyle Peninusla. It's a four-star hotel. Clifden is 15 miles away. All the rooms have beguiling views, and the common areas there are rustic and relaxing. There's usually a peat fire in the evenings. (The Nobel-prize winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney and the former President of Ireland--also a poet!-- have both stayed here ) Opening night there's champagne and local oysters!
Every afternoon, at 1pm, we gather in the library having turned in our work earlier that day or the night before. We read each other’s pages, led by Matt and Jacki, with supportive but focused comments. Most people read nearly every day or certainly every other day. (We may do some generative exercise, too) Don't forget the lunch break. We're usually done around 5:30 or 6pm.That leaves at least an hour's walking or private time til we get ferried to dinner, which we enjoy at an interesting variety of area restaurants, including Ballynahinch Castle. We are very near Connemara National Park for the adventurous and there are many gentle walks on the Renvyle grounds. Our goal is to send you home with pages of profound accomplishment, and at least a couple good walks and swims under your belt. We’ll go out and hear some music one night, too. The hotel has a heated outdoor pool, but not a gym.
The "Love Comes in at the Eye" reading is at Christchurch, at 7pm on May 31. This is a way of getting the community involved, along with area writers and leaders. The reading becomes a program and podcast on Connemara FM, and we meet after for dinner at a pub in Clifden. Check out what our writers have to say about the workshop!
The down payment for the workshop is 1k, and this is non-refundable. For those able to pay the total before Feb. 1, there is a $200 discount. After April 15, unfortunately nothing can be refunded unless, but it can be applied to the following year.