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 2026/27 Writers Circle will open in Spring 2026, with the programme beginning in September 2026. We’ll be seeking writers who are exploring personal experiences and those experimenting with new approaches to storytelling.
Successful applicants will have the opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions about their writing challenges, receive constructive feedback, access peer support, and become part of a vibrant creative community.
At the Writers Circle, we prioritise creating a supportive and inclusive environment for all participants. In 2026, we’ll continue to focus on critiquing excerpts, while also inviting participants to use the Circle to explore the broader challenges that naturally arise across a complete work. These deeper, more reflective discussions help foster the kind of insight and collaboration that sit at the heart of everything we do at Accidental Theatre.
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.
Fionntán Macdonald is a writer of prose, poetry and drama born and based in Belfast. He has previously written for QFT Belfast, been featured in Film Daze and Hear Us Scream and has had poetry published in Aurora’s and Blossoms and Eascair Magazine. His short drama has been performed with Patchwork Productions and he is currently collaborating with local artists on several theatre projects.
He is currently writing his first full length play and working on his first novel with the Writer’s Circle.
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.