WRITING IN MATERA, International Writing Course 2025

Teacher: Ulf Peter Hallberg

In September 2025 I taught students from France, Germany, Austria, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland “Historical Novel” and “Crime Novel”, inspired by the work I had done on Strindberg in Copenhagen 1887-1889 (“Le messager du Nord”, Gallimard 2025) and Fredric Jameson’s great book, “The Detections of Totality”, on the Master of crime novels, Raymond Chandler, The workshop was a Moveable Feast, walking around in Matera looking for inspiration in streets, parks, churches, monasteries, cafés and elsewhere in the Sassi or in the Murgia Valley. It was possible to walk alone or stroll in groups, come back to get advice at the chosen Base Café, to discuss ideas, openings, correspondances and ways of writing. I did some plotting with the participants or I just listened and pointed out the importance of seeing what the city provides, thinking and rethinking the storyline in confrontation with reality – getting inspiration from details: faces, cats, nuns, beauty, love, chaos and memory, whatever. Take the Matera Mix: the past always present in the streets at night.

Creativity will come suddenly and strongly when forced to appear by the pressure from what happens around you and from me – the teacher and his alter ego, Harry Coralli – in Matera. The Alter Ego is what I always teach – the way to liberate yourself. To step aside and create characters that stem from you but are not you. To give yourself another name, to choose to be a character – pure fiction, founded on some reality, bits and pieces.

In 2026 I will teach “Monster Story” and “City Tales” and we will be walking the streets of Matera creating stories. “Monster Story” has the subtitle “Does AI (Artificial Intelligence) have a Soul? What About Us?”. The Subtitle for “City Tales” is “A Tale of Two Cities” (The story should play in Matera and the students Paralell City and Country of Choice.

This is one of talented students in 2025, Dylan Lyons, the Irish winner, has tried out during and after my workshop, in a very creative way. Here’s his comment on the work in 2025 and his beautiful story, which contains the quality to be developed into a novel. And it sure will be, because apparently Dylan learnt the compassion of struggle, to fight for and embrace creativity – in Matera, City of Generosity, City of the Arts.

Welcome to “Does AI Have a Soul?” and “City Tales” in September 2026!

∫∫∫

Historical Novel, Dylan Lyons

Preface

As part of the international creative writing course, I got the opportunity to explore the historical novel over the course of a two-day workshop, run by Ulf Peter Hallberg. I had never considered writing historical fiction before, but it was with Peter’s insight and guidance that I suddenly became interested. His way of encouraging an open style of dialogue in the classroom, allowing us to share our ideas and to develop them was so beneficial to me. There was an emphasis on being able to write under constraints and how to handle professional pressure, deadlines and whatever else is thrown at you throughout the creative process. This was further reinforced by the primary task of the workshop, where we were sent out into the city of Matera to find inspiration for a story that could be set there – and we had to have an idea developed and outlined that very same afternoon.

The idea of writing a story that had links to Irish folklore had always appealed to me. I was eager to write something that could draw from the wealth of Irish stories and myth structure, but that would also allow me to explore my own ideas of freedom, memory and rebellion through character. All of this culminated in Matera, down a narrow street in the old city, where I sat for hours, outlining a historical novel pitch that I could return to Peter with. This idea combined my longstanding interest in Irish history with Matera – something I could never have conceived without that task. We then shared these ideas and first few lines together in a busy little café down from the university. To say this was one of the highlights of my week in Matera is an understatement.

Winning this award for Ireland was both a shock and a huge source of pride for me. However, in the run up to it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wouldn’t belong; that I wasn’t a writer. That said, from the moment I arrived in Matera, each and every instructor and every participant on the course helped to change that. Getting to spend a week surrounded by writers, being totally absorbed into that world – it was thanks to this, to Felice, that I found my voice. I am so grateful to Felice for the incredible work he does in Matera to make this experience possible.

What follows here are the opening pages of what may become a fully realised historical novel, workshopped in a bustling Matera café, made possible only by Peter’s efforts.

***

LETTERS TO LUCREZIA, Dylan Lyons

A rebel is not something you become, it is something you are. It lives within you – alive from birth, or, as in me, dormant – lying in wait for its true enemy. Finzio is how I was raised; who you love, but Fionn is who I am. Ireland, my home, the home of my father whom I never knew and yet know deeply, is not free.

My people are ruled. Oppressed. Enslaved. These are the thoughts which have occupied my mind since leaving our home. Reaching Napoli took longer than my provisions would allow, so I stopped in the stony village of Eboli and visited Gennaro, so we could rehash our many battles together. His house rests amidst sparse farmland, surrounded by grazing goats. It is no wonder he left the fight, or perhaps the fight left him.

Thankfully, the letter we drafted was to Captain Soldato’s liking, such that I was placed on the very next schooner bound for Cork – rebel country according to the sailors. I must admit, the work of a deckhand could train any man for battle. Grafting. Learning. Obeying.

En Route to Marseille, where I sit now writing this, we passed through many fishing villages. I saw nets, heavy with the day’s catch, being hauled onto small boats by the fisherman whose windburned faces seemed all too familiar with the taste of the salt spray. Their skiffs skimmed the choppy waves, as if goading the sea, as their oars cried hymns of rebellion, battling against the tides. And in their toiling’s, I saw my Irish brothers, adrift in their own lands – our land. And like those oars, I too am determined to carve out my own path of Freedom in Ireland – for Ireland.

If I could be offered one minute of Freedom for my country, my home, but in exchange, should I accept it, I would die at the end of that minute – I would take it, for by the grace of God there lives within all humans the eternal love of Freedom, a love impatient of Oppression, of control.

You didn’t know when we met that I was a rebel. Neither did I. Nor did you know that I would one day leave you to fight in foreign lands and it breaks my heart that you must read this, alone.

Dearest Lucrezia, may my words reach you even if I do not, carried by the winds that divide us.

Yours, in this life and the next,

Fionn

Port of Marseille,

5th of March, 1867

***

Lucanian Hills, near Potenza

Autumn,

1863

Dearest Lucrezia,

Night has made an early appearance. The hills swallow all light before it has time to spread. Our men move quieter now, as if sound itself were a traitor. We are camped among the scrub and stone, where the ground opposes sleep and the cold is her enforcer. If this letter has reached you, please thank Michele once again for me.

This morning, we got caught up in a firefight with men we never actually saw. We fired at shadows behind rocks. Cowards who scurried under smoke, hiding where no camp ought to live. It is a strange thing to fight an enemy whose face is not fixed in your mind. You pull the trigger not at a man, but at a rumour. A swift ripple in the grass. A fear. We knew it was over when the sun revealed blood on those same stones, but we did not triumph. What followed instead was a dull silence – the silence of having survived another day. It was after this, while buffing my rifle by a shallow stream, that I thought of you.

I thought of when we first met. How I was half a boy then, all limbs and no sense. At the time, my days where spent trailing behind the shadow of Francesco as he shuffled through the archives. I pretended to read while listening to him speak. He would talk at length of dates, of kings, or borders that shifted and reformed like the sands in low tide. I learned a great deal from him, not least of all, that history is by no means a straight road. In fact, it is hardly a road at all, so much as a series of paths crisscrossing generations. I did not understand back then, while sitting in his study and listening intently, that one day I would walk those paths myself.

You were quieter than I might’ve expected, and I remember you watched in a way that could unsettle the Sassi’s. You watched more than you spoke, cautiously peering through wavy strands of blonde armour. Even hen, I knew you were of the kind who listens for what goes unsaid. I think that is why I write to you now as I do, in full confidence that you will find between my scrawls the things which I can only ever leave unsaid. That is my biggest flaw, Luca.

These hills are full of men like me. Men who do not believe in the Italy that has been forced upon us. Some fight for freedom. Others are ruled by hunger. A dangerous few worship mayhem. We are painted Brigands. Criminals. Ghosts. Perhaps we are. But, as I lift my head from this letter and stare down at the village left burned, where the mothers of our brothers spit at soldiers boots I cannot pretend this war is over… nor that it will ever end.

And so, I fight.

I fight because I was raised to fight. I fight because I have seen how power changes its diet but never its appetite. I fight because freedom, once glimpsed, is fused to the eye. I fight because I believe, perhaps foolishly, that somewhere beyond this violence lies a future worth the cost. Luca, to exist in a single moment of unconditional freedom… well that is worth its weight in death.

I say all of this, just to say it is you who steadies me when doubt pushes back. I imagine you reading this letter by firelight, your brow furrowed in that way, when you are feigning anger while concealing pride, your fingers tracing the parts where my scribbles have faltered.

When this is over, I will walk with you again, up and down the cobblestones, to the markets and the mountains, where your voice will rise above mine. Correcting me. Challenging me. I long on days like today, for the labour of peace. For shared silence. Shared days. Shared bread unstained by blood. Until then, I carry you with me, as surely as I carry my name.

Write to me if you can. Michele will surely return to use. Even a single line will be enough to remind me that the world contains more than hills and smoke and orders barked in the dark.

Yours, in this life and the next.

Finzio

***

My Dearest Lucrezia,

I write to you as a sharp wind scours across the Kerry hills, whipping through the thatched roofs and darkened streets, carrying with it the scent of peat smoke and the salt of the sea beyond the bay. I’m thinking of you, and the life you’re carrying Our child, who has yet to feel the sun, already pulls upon my heart as heavily as the hunt rifle on my lap. I cannot help but believe, with a certainty that would raise your doubts, that we’re having a boy. I will have him bear the name, Darragh, for I have learned in my short time here of a fierce Irish warrior by that name. More myth than man – possibly both. These people are great storytellers. Our son shall carry in the syllables of his name both the memory and courage of these great people. My people. For what is in a name… if not hope?

The men here are poor in number and in arms. They gather behind walls more broken than barrier. Rifles are scarce where pikes are plenty, yet their eyes burn with a fire that no Imperial powers will ever contain. I know their spirit. It is one that will lose all battles if it means staying in the war.

Two days from now, we will strike at the barracks that cradles the soldiers of our oppressor, a handful of us against a mountain of colonizers. I confess, Luca, that I should be wary, yet I am carried on an infectious tide of hope, the same tide that batters these western shores.

I have walked the hills of Cahirciveen and watched the sun spill gold over the mountains and into the loughs, and in that light, I see the Ireland that men speak of in hushed tones. The Ireland that waits for the brave to rise. The Ireland that will live to see the cowards fall, with or without her eyes. It is a strange thing, how hope and despair can live in the same place, each feeding off the other. The laughter of boys in the streets. The warnings from seagulls over the Atlantic. The distant tolling of the church bell. They remind me that we are alive. They are echoes of the freedom we seek.

I have written these words to you, so that you may know you are always with me. Let these lines by a hymn to our child, to Ireland and to the unyielding flame that burns within all of us to fight, even when good reason would bid us rest.

Know this, Luca; should these words reach you, they are filled with a hope that is neither naïve nor blind. These words are filled with the defiance of a soul that refuses to bow. For we are rebels not merely at arms, but at heart… and there is no greater victory than that.

Yours, with all the love that rages between these hills and home.

Fionn

Cahirciveen

Kerry

Late Summer, 1867

Dylan Lyons