WELCOME TO THE SANCHO PANZA LITERARY SOCIETY

The Sancho Panza Literary Society was founded as an independent society of ideas--a forum for unmitigated artistic expression and vigorous debate, in residence each summer at the hauntingly beautiful and historic Trinity College Dublin (where all the ghosts speak in verse and even the architecture has pathos). Don Quixote is lauded as literature’s ultimate dreamer, but his sidekick, Sancho Panza, knew that they were just tilting at windmills, and went along to explore the unknown anyway; and that is the kind of imagination that we revere, and exactly what sustains us when everything else falls away. This becomes more essential now, as the colleges devolve into myopic career factories, and no one contemplates anything.  I traveled back from Dublin after our inaugural with one prevailing ambition—to make the rest of my career about projects like this.

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Our Dublin program features ten days of writer’s workshop and literary debate at Trinity, and is augmented by trips to Howth and the Irish Sea, plays at the Abbey, Gate, and Gaeity Theatres, visits to the Dublin Writer’s Museum, The National Art Gallery, and the Guinness Storehouse (all within walking distance from campus), and a full day excursion to the west of Ireland to visit Galway and the Cliffs of Moher.

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New Square (the official journal of the Sancho Panza Literary Society, named for the section of Trinity’s campus where our workshop participants reside) allows us to continue this work year-round, and provides a forum for diverse and talented groups of writers to publish and explore their voices in a variety of forms.  

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Please browse through the rest of our site for application information, sample itineraries, information about New Square including submission guidelines, and commentary from founding members.

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Cheers,

Joseph M. Reynolds.

Founder and Director, The Sancho Panza Literary Society

Editor-in-Chief, New Square