THE first master's programme in creative writing to be offered by an Irish university will begin in Trinity College, Dublin, this October. Already, some 70 applicants have vied for coveted places. All Irish applicants who received an offer of a place were invited to apply for The Irish Times fellowship which will support during the programme's inaugural year one student who for financial reasons might not otherwise have been able to take up a place.

Poet and writer Conor O'Callaghan has been awarded the fellowship. Professor Nicholas Grene, head of the school of English, says that he is "enormously pleased that a writer of O'Callaghan's talent, an already published poet whose work has received considerable recognition should be a student in the first year of the M Phil in creative writing. It's an encouraging indication of the calibre of student who will be taking the course."

O'Callaghan says that he had a collection of poetry, The History of Rain, published in 1993 and he is hoping that the course environment will stimulate him to finish his next book in ways that are unexpected to him.

Grene explains that, while you cannot teach writing to somebody without talent, there is an enormous amount that can be done for emerging writers.

Creative writing is one of the major strengths of Trinity's school of English, with Gerald Dawe, Brendan Kennelly and Eilean Ni Chuilleanain on the staff.

The core activity of the one year full time course will take the form of three hours of weekly workshops for the 18 weeks of the first two terms. Students will be required to take workshops, to attend lectures on hook editing, publishing, contexts of Anglo Irish literature and the practice of writing. They will also take one special subject offered by the school of English or a specialist writing workshop led by Trinity's writer Fellow.

Students will be assessed on a substantial portfolio of creative work written during the year (70 per cent); a project arising out of the book editing and publishing course (15 per cent) and a portfolio of written work in relation to the specialist writing workshop or a 5,000 word essay submitted in relation to the special subject (15 per cent).

The course will be based in the newly established Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, the house where Wilde was born in 1854.