Live Creative Writing Workshop in Dublin, Ireland
Sept 18-22, 2025
Stories to Live & Die for - LIVE Workshop
with Sabrina Görlitz & April Bosshard
This five-day workshop begins at 3 pm on Thursday and ends at 3 pm on Monday. Participants will secure their own accommodation in Dublin and meet during the days at the workshop location.
Workshop Fee: €550
During this five-day workshop we will wander and write our way through the powerful existential questions that lie at the foundation of living, writing, and dying with conscious wonderment.
You might think: living and writing make sense, but why include dying too?
The stories we read, write, and tell about ourselves and each other have a profound impact on the way our individual lives unfold.
Most of the stories we read and write focus on how to live in the world, but we’re in need of fresh stories help us incorporate how to live fully consciously alongside the awareness of the inevitable ending awaiting each one of us: death.
This awareness has the power to sharpen your creative direction, help you discern which stories need telling, and inspire you to write the stories only you can write…before you die.
Stories nourish us while we’re living, and the stories we leave behind can be nourishment for others after we’re gone.
In this workshop…
We’ll start by first understanding how storytelling principles can offer us a powerful lens through which we can appreciate our lives as more than just a series of random events. Learn to see your life as a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
We’ll dig into the touchstone memories that help and hinder our ability to live an authentic and satisfying life. Recover your truest passions and values.
We’ll mine our personal stories to find the treasures we want to unearth and shape into something to share with others. Discover which experiences have the power to inspire your deepest writing.
As we learn to view our own lives as stories that can make an impact—now and after we’re gone—we’ll delve into ways we can live with more engagement, fewer regrets, expanded consciousness, and increased acceptance of every life story’s ultimate ending. Write about what matters most to you.
Through talks, presentations, facilitated discussions, and practical exercises we will gain a deeper understanding of the intricate “patterns of story-crafting” and how to apply them to our personal endeavors—whether they are expressed through writing or “simply” living with a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Move deeply into your creative work with courage and a sense of wonder.
As satisfying and thought-provoking ideas emerge, we will harvest insights and encouragement to go on living, writing, and working alongside the truth of our eventual departure from this world. Align your desire and will to create with the reality of your finite life.
This workshop might be for you if:
You’re a writer of stories (short stories, novels, or screenplays) and wondering which stories are really needed right now and how to write them.
You’re working on, or thinking of writing, a memoir and want to explore the ways your personal story connects with larger, universal themes.
You’ve started one or more projects but feel stuck and unable to complete one or all and want to know which one deserves your time, effort, and devotion now.
You feel called to write about a difficult or sad story from your life, and you’re ready to “write from the scar rather than the wound”; meaning, you’ve already processed the trauma* and you want to harvest the gifts from the experience.
Become a Deeper Writer
If you want to write deep stories it’s vital to know who you are. But if you want to write deeper stories, incorporating the knowledge that “one day” you won’t be is just as important.
Whether your stories take the form of a memoir, novel, personal essay, or in-depth journal entries, there’s a healing power to putting hard, sad, scary, sublime, truthful, and beautiful experiences into words.
This workshop will give you a chance to dig deeper into your experiences to discover what you really want to write about and how to write in a way that connects with others. Exercises, time to write, and opportunities to share insights and pieces of writing (optional), will strengthen your confidence and identity as writer.
Learning to anticipate and integrate the inevitability of the end of life in ways that are stimulating instead of numbing will allow you to carry home a fresh perspective on how to be fully engaged in a creative life that openly includes death.
Your Workshop Hosts
This is a special collaboration between April Bosshard (story coach, writer, and editor) and Sabrina Görlitz (palliative biographer, writer, and end of life companion).
April, based in Vancouver, BC, and Sabrina, from Hamburg, Germany, first met at a writing retreat in Dublin in May of 2019. Months later, they shared an unusual bond when both of their fathers died in very different ways within weeks of each other, in July 2019.
From that point, a poignant and creative transatlantic friendship developed. Both share a profound professional and personal interest in storytelling—April as a story coach and editor working with writers from all over the world and Sabrina as a trained journalist and palliative care worker who specializes in writing and saving the life stories of the terminally ill.
After years of having many in-depth conversations on the topic and inspiring each other’s work, April and Sabrina decided to share their insights and knowledge about how the awareness of storytelling principles can not only help you to write more easily but to also live more meaningfully and approach death and dying with a calm and open heart.
They chose to host their first workshop together in Dublin for several reasons: it’s the place they first met; Ireland is known for its rich storytelling tradition; Sabrina lived in Dublin for years and learned English there; and April’s paternal grandmother grew up in Galway before immigrating to the US. They also have an inkling that the leprechauns, sprites, and fey folk think it’s a good idea, too.
More About Sabrina & April
Sabrina Görlitz is a trained journalist and a companion for the dying. Since 2019, she has been accompanying terminally ill people in their last weeks of life as Germany’s first Story Nurse. After learned the principles of Dignity Therapy, she created her own end-of-life storytelling project called “palligraphy,” combination of the words "palliative" and biography.” Sabrina has developed her own training program and gives talks on the power of storytelling in palliative care. Her special approach has sparked media interest both in Germany and abroad. She has lived in Ireland for a number of years and calls Dublin her second home. https://en.storycare.de/
April Bosshard is a respected workshop facilitator and story coach who’s helped hundreds of writers develop and complete their projects. Sometimes called a “story whisperer” or “story genie,” she has a background in film and television and has written fiction and non-fiction for traditional and independent markets, which include publications in the US, UK, and Canada. April teaches at conferences and leads workshops internationally and online, while also working with individual clients as a story coach and developmental editor. https://www.deepstorydesign.com
What you will take away:
Profound knowledge about the craft of storytelling
Ability to apply that knowledge to your writing and to your life
Discovery of the “red thread” of your life and how to find it in your stories
Encouragement and confidence to have end-of-life-conversations with loved ones (including yourself)
Greater peace around accepting your own death and more openness for approaching it with curiosity (and maybe even anticipation)
New impulses and tools to engage on a deeper level with terminally ill people
(Re) Connection to your writing and fresh inspiration to write deep and meaningful stories
Strength to embrace the seemingly “sad” stories in life, a capacity to treasure their gifts, and a willingness to both write and live through them
Lasting connections with like-minded people dedicated to the magic of storytelling and living (and dying) in conscious wonderment
A Note:
Much of the magic of a workshop like this is created by the combination of people who show up and the inspiration of the hosts in the moment. Please remain open-minded and open-hearted about the flow of activity and content. We have the powerful, whole-hearted intention to create a welcoming, creative, insightful, and transformative experience for each participant.
April & Sabrina
About the Location
Chapel of Ease, Dublin, Ireland
We will gather in the beautiful Chapel of Ease, a former little church which is now privately owned and used as a “sanctuary for free thought inviting people to explore the meaning of existence, without dogma.”
Lovingly restored by its current owner, the chapel has turned into a beloved event venue for workshops, concerts, and retreats. It is located on the South Side of Dublin, within walking distance to the sea, and only ten minutes by bus to the city centre. (There is a bus stop right outside the chapel.)
If you are looking for accommodation close by, check out the surrounding neighborhoods of Ballsbridge, Ringsend, Irishtown or Sandymount. For reference, the workshop location address is: 57 Irishtown Rd., Dublin 4.
Note: It’s highly recommended to arrive the day before the workshop and depart the day after. Even better, explore Dublin for a few days on either side of the workshop.
