I was 18, an early school leaver, interviewing with Fighting Words operations manager Sara Bennett at the organisation’s office on Behan Square, Dublin, when who should walk in through the front door but its co-founder Roddy Doyle?
It was February 2016. I had just come through an early school-leavers course in Ballyfermot, which focused on equipping us with the skills to enter the workforce. An internship placement was part of the programme so I contacted Fighting Words, which I had heard of through my wonderful, thoughtful instructors at Kylemore Community Training Centre. Although I still wanted to go to college, which I eventually did, it turned out to be a long road. There was a time, back in early 2015, when my friends and peers were preparing to sit their Leaving Cert exams, that I felt like I’d be lost forever.
So to be there, occupying a building with Roddy Doyle, entertaining the idea that I was going to be able to work there? It didn’t seem possible. I was thrilled but a little terrified when Sara offered me a six-month placement. Wayward, totally unsure of myself, I’d always wanted to write. I had never felt that I had much to offer in the way of anything else. There’s a spark that exists in Fighting Words that ignites the minute you come through the front door. After more than 15 years in operation, that spark is stronger than ever.
As a young person, volunteering in Fighting Words fostered in me a stronger sense of self, a stronger sense of community. As I met and worked alongside people of different ages, at different stages of life, I gained an understanding that there was no such thing as a straight line through the middle. My path was no more unique than anybody else’s, but it was my story, and the stories were always what mattered most.
After my placement finished, I stayed on as a regular volunteer mentor for more than two years, before starting an undergraduate degree in English and creative writing at UCD. I graduated with my BA in 2022 and my MFA in 2023, at 26. I had come a long way in eight years. My first novel is due to be published next January.
The work in this supplement is vibrant, vulnerable, at times playful and at others sombre, but always an undercurrent of hope runs through. It’s the type of thing that can only come from a place where the creative mind is celebrated, where the opportunity to come together with others is offered. It can be an isolating thing, wanting to write, when the digital world draws your attention to every corner of the globe, when every scandal and tragedy sleeps beside you on your bedside locker, waiting to greet you when the sun rises.
It’s too easy to feel like what you want to make doesn’t matter, that there is nobody out there willing to receive it. That’s why it’s important to bring young creative minds together, to engage with them on equal ground and provide a space for them to access themselves unfettered by the restraints of their everyday lives.
My formative years, without question, were the years I spent in Fighting Words. The friends I made, the satisfaction of feeling useful, the confidence and trust given to me by the staff there I wouldn’t have received anywhere else were crucial to me as an early school leaver. I see that help being given to visiting students, interns, volunteers, every time I visit. It is a space where every single participant has something to gain. At the centre of it are the stories and the poems, but it is in the people where the magic lives. Each and every one of you.
Djamel White’s debut novel, All Them Dogs, will be published in 2026 by John Murray Press and Riverhead Books
