WRITERS CIRCLE
The 2024/25 Writers Circle is now underway, featuring three plays, two novels, and an exceptional group of talented writers, which you can meet in the gallery below!
Submissions for the 2025/26 Writers Circle will open in Spring 2025, with the program set to begin in September 2025. We’ll be looking for writers who are delving into personal experiences and those experimenting with new approaches to storytelling. Successful applicants will have the chance to engage in meaningful discussions about their writing challenges, receive constructive feedback, access peer support, and join a vibrant creative community.
At the Writers Circle, we prioritise creating a supportive environment for all participants. Rather than focusing solely on critiquing excerpts, we address the challenges of entire works as a community through deep, insightful discussions. Community lies the heart of everything we do at Accidental.
Accidental Writers Circle 2024/25
Darcey Elizabeth Youngman is a Manc writer, based in Belfast. She graduated from Queens University with an MA in Creative Writing in 2023. Her work has been published/performed with BrickFox Theatre, The Blackbird anthology, Slugger O'Toole and Tenby9.
She is currently working at the Seamus Heaney Centre, as co-ordinator and editor of critique.
Kristen Kernaghan is an American playwright and educator living in Belfast. She studied Drama and Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, and her short plays Yes, No, Maybe So (Guerilla Theatre), Fallen Socks and Fear (Accidental Theatre, Cork Arts Theatre), Shakespeare’s Sisters (Fickle Favours) and This is the First Scene, Maybe the Only (Accidental Theatre) have been produced in Ireland, England and America. Her first full-length play Visitations received a staged reading with Ransom Production’s Write on the Edge programme. Her second play Our Father explores what we do with uncomfortable legacies as three adult children move their father into a dementia care facility.
Bethany Waterhouse-Bradley is an American, living for two decades in Belfast. She has been writing poetry and short stories since she was a precocious girl in Maine. She has published a volume of academic work in sociology and social policy journals. Bethany is in the final stages of completing her first novel, Murmurations - a ghost story about intergenerational trauma and the terrors of motherhood. She has shared her poetry in workshops at Seaside Books, read a short story at Accidental Theatre's Piano and Prose, and is a member of the 2024/25 Accidental Writer's Circle.