The members of Ballea Writers Club Ireland span in ages from late teens to early seventies and their youth group span from age seven to seventeen. The founder members of the writing club recognised that the long-term future of the group, and indeed of creative writing, lay with youth writers. It was for that they formed the youth writing group. In time they hope to get a Creative Writing Junior Cert and a Creative Writing Leaving Cert added to the exam syllabus for Ireland, where the creative writing components of the language exams have been marginalized. The dream would be that the proposed courses and their subsequent exams could be taken in English, Irish and other languages.

In the spring of 2007 Ballea Writers Club facilitated poetry-writing workshops in twenty County Cork schools and went on from that to run the Ballea Writers Club Young Poets of the Year Awards. The poetry competition, which could be entered in either English or Irish language and offered Euro 1000 in sponsored prizes, got over 500 entries. This inaugural youth poetry competition led to first publications for forty of the young poets between the ages of eight and sixteen. The adult poets also achieved publications and one of their poems was long-listed in FISH 2007.

By Easter 2007 Ballea Writers Club was operational on four arms: fiction, non-fiction, writing poetry and journalism. See examples of members Publications. Their budding journalists achieved so many publications that a Cork newspaper, The Carrigdhoun, asked them to supply a full-time cub reporter. One of the teenage members, disillusioned with his B.A English course at University, went up for the post, got it, got the front page, his own page and many other columns. By six months into the job he was acting editor.

The short story writers are also successful, have ten publications, a backlog of over a dozen short stories accepted for publication and many others submitted. The writing group also produce flash fiction. Several of the fiction writers have embarked on novels and one, who was elected to The Society of Authors in June 2007, is currently negotiating a six-book deal.

Ballea Writers Club Website was launched in November 2007 and got over 8000 hits in the first three months. The website traffic arrive here because of reputation e.g. Ballea Writers Club came 2nd in The Writers Group of the Year Awards 2007. And traffic comes because this website is Content-Rich e.g. it offers writers Short Story Writing Tips; 'Writers Forty Nine Steps' and Short Story Writing Exercises; 'The Writers Dozen.' The writing group raised its Internet profile by using Website Optimization Techniques; see 'Writers Websites on Top, 62 Tips on Writing Writers Websites,' which ensured that Ballea Writers Club Website would rise to the top of Internet search engine rankings.

True to their Irish culture Ballea Writers Club endorse a 'work hard play hard' ethos and organise social gatherings and other events for their writing group members and supporters. The group pop champagne as soon as they hear of a forthcoming award but block diversion at writing group workshops, which are on the second and fourth Mondays of the month for fiction, and by arrangement for poetry and journalism. The writing group membership fee is Euro 40 per year and they charge a sub of Euro 5 per workshop. Twenty five percent of the writing club income is spent on their library. The writing group holds an extensive collection of books. Bookself

Ballea Writers Club welcomes new members. Enquiries can be made through balleawriters@gmail.com. Novice writers are as welcome and supported as professional writers. The club does not stipulate that prospective members take a course in creative writing before joining the group but encourage that a parallel evening class be started as soon as possible thereafter.

Neither are previous publications a prerequisite to joining this writing group. The writing club members edit each other's work, focus on facilitating publications and make every effort to bring on the new/as yet unpublished writing club members. With one years grace they then encourage a minimum publication rate of one per member per year, a target readily achieved by anyone who is serious about forwarding his art.

Members of Ballea Writers Club never pay for or contribute a fee towards publication and neither does the group support self-publishing. The writing club review/editing service is free of charge for local members. The rate for outside submissions is Euro 40 per 2000 word story and Euro 25 per poem, of up to forty lines. Enquiries should be emailed to balleawriters@gmail.com and tagged for the attention of Elaine Rhys-Davies.

The Ballea Writers Club does not give out individual contact details but will, where appropriate, forward communication through balleawriters@gmail.com
Ballea Writers Club Ireland, Ballea Castle, Carrigaline, Cork, Ireland
Ballea Writers Club Ireland Website Text by Elaine Rhys-Davies