November Over The Edge: Open Reading-Penelope Shuttle, Ursula Shields-Huemer, & Gillian Hamill plus LAUNCH of Skylight 47 Latest Issue

The November Over The Edge: Open Reading takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, November 23rd, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Penelope Shuttle, Ursula Shields-Huemer, & Gillian Hamill. The centre piece of the evening will be the launch of issue nine of Skylight 47, the exciting bi-annual poetry paper from the Skylight Poets, which will be on sale on the evening. The publication will be launched by Penelope Shuttle. Skylight 47 is based in Galway and publishes poems by poets from all around the globe; all poets are welcome to submit poems for consideration for future issues. For details on how to take out a subscription to Skylight 47 see here.

Gillian Hamill

Originally from the village of Eglinton in Derry, Gillian Hamill has lived in Dublin for the past 13 years (intermingled with stints in Galway, Waterford and Nice). She has a BA in English Studies from Trinity College, Dublin and a MA in Journalism from NUI Galway. She is currently the editor of trade publication, ShelfLife magazine and has acted in a number of theatre productions. Gillian started writing poetry in late 2014.

Ursula Shields-Huemer is Austrian and has lived in Ireland for 25 years. She is a psychotherapist and Jungian analyst. Her poems have grown from a longtime engagement with language and creativity  – supported by classes with Kevin Higgins and Susan Millar DuMars. Ursula was recently invited to present poems at a conference on artist Caspar Walter Rauh. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Over the Edge New Writer’s award.

Penelope Shuttle

Penelope Shuttle has lived in Cornwall since 1970, and is the widow of the poet Peter Redgrove. Her first collection of poems, The Orchard Upstairs (1981) was followed by six other books from Oxford University Press, and then A Leaf Out of His Book (1999) from Oxford Poets/Carcanet, and Redgrove’s Wife (2006) and Sandgrain and Hourglass (2010) from Bloodaxe Books. Redgrove’s Wife was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2006. Sandgrain Her retrospective, Unsent: New & Selected Poems 1980-2012 (Bloodaxe Books, 2012), drew on ten collections published over three decades. Her most recent collection, Will you walk a little faster?, was published by Bloodaxe in May . First published as a novelist, her fiction includes All the Usual Hours of Sleeping (1969), and Rainsplitter in the Zodiac Garden (1977).With Peter Redgrove, she is co-author of The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman (1978) and Alchemy for Women: Personal Transformation Through Dreams and the Female Cycle (1995). Shuttle’s work is widely anthologised and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and her poem ‘Outgrown’ was used recently in a radio and television commercial. She is current Chair of the Falmouth Poetry Group, one of the longest-running poetry workshops in the U.K.

The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. For further details phone 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of Galway City Council, Poetry Ireland, & The Arts Council.

IN THE NEW YEAR Over The Edge announces DAYTIME course in Advanced Fiction Writing with Susan Millar DuMars STARTS February 2nd

Susan Millar DuMars with Over The Edge co-organiser Kevin Higgins

THE CLASS TAKES PLACE on FRIDAYS, 2-4pm for 8 weeks.
STARTING FRIDAY FEBRUARY 2nd. 

Maximum Number students: 5 

CLASS DESCRIPTION: this class is for those serious about writing short or long fiction; those who are working on a fiction project independently and feel they need feedback and support.  From week one, each student will be responsible to email an extract from their story or novel to Susan Millar DuMars and their classmates by Wednesday noon.  Students will also bring hard copies of the piece into class. Students can submit up to 5 double spaced pages each week. In each session we will provide feedback to each student. Susan’s feedback will be detailed as it will be based on her earlier reading of the work. Thus, each student will receive detailed feedback on a total of 40 pages of work.

Price: €140 for 8 weeks payable in advance. There are no refunds. To guarantee a place you must pay in advance. If you have been struggling with a short story or a novel, this is the class for you. 

The class is organised by Over The Edge literary events and will take place at 3 Carbry Road, Newcastle, Galway. Five minutes from NUI Galway. Parking available.

ABOUT THE TUTOR:  Susan Millar DuMars’ debut poetry collection, Big Pink Umbrella, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2008.  Her next collection, Dreams for Breakfast, appeared in April 2010.  Her work features in Landing Places, Dedalus’ 2010 anthology of immigrant poetry written in Ireland; and also in The Best Of Irish Poetry 2010.  A fiction writer as well, she published a collection of short stories, American Girls, with Lapwing in 2007.  She published a book of short stories in 2010: Lights in the Distance, published by Doire Press and  was recently the Featured Fiction writer in the American online magazine The Atticus Review. She has been the recipient of an Arts Council Literature Bursary. Susan's third collection of poetry, The God Thing, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013; her fourth book of poems Bone Fire was launched recently at the Cúirt Festival of International Literature. She lives in Galway, where she and her husband have run the Over the Edge readings series since 2003. Susan edited the anthology Over the Edge – The First Ten years, published by Salmon, which includes work by forty seven writers who have published a first book since they did a reading at an Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library. 

YOU CAN REGISTER ONLINE NOW FOR THE CLASS STARTING FRIDAY FEBRUARY 2nd.

ADVANCED FICTION DAYTIME CLASS

IN THE NEW YEAR Over The Edge announces EVENING CLASS in Advanced Fiction Writing with Susan Millar DuMars STARTS WEDNESDAY JANUARY 17th

THE CLASS TAKES PLACE on WEDNESDAY EVENINGS, 7-9pm for 8 week (with a mid-term break on Valentine's Day).

STARTING WEDNESDAY, January 17th. Maximum Number students: 5. Each student will receive close individual attention. 

CLASS DESCRIPTION: this class is for those serious about writing short or long fiction; those who are working on a fiction project independently and feel they need feedback and support. From week one, each student will be responsible to email an extract from their story or novel to Susan Millar DuMars and their classmates by Monday noon.  Students will also bring hard copies of the piece into class. Students can submit up to 5 double spaced pages each week. In each session we will provide feedback to each student. Susan’s feedback will be detailed as it will be based on her earlier reading of the work. Thus, each student will receive detailed feedback on a total of 40 pages of work.


The class is organised by Over The Edge literary events and will take place at 3 Carbry Road, Newcastle, Galway. Five minutes from NUI Galway. Parking available. For directions see map.

ABOUT THE TUTOR: Susan Millar DuMars’ debut poetry collection, Big Pink Umbrella, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2008. Her next collection, Dreams for Breakfast, appeared in April 2010. Her work features in Landing Places, Dedalus’ 2010 anthology of immigrant poetry written in Ireland; and also in The Best Of Irish Poetry 2010. A fiction writer as well, she published a collection of short stories, American Girls, with Lapwing in 2007. She published a book of short stories in 2010: Lights in the Distance, published by Doire Press, and was recently the Featured Fiction writer in the American online magazine The Atticus Review. She has been the recipient of an Arts Council Literature Bursary. Susan's third collection of poetry, The God Thing, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013; her fourth collection, Bone Fire, was launched recently at the Cúirt Festival of International Literature. She lives in Galway, where she and her husband have run the Over the Edge readings series since 2003. Susan edited the anthology Over the Edge – The First Ten years, published by Salmon, which includes work by forty seven writers who have published a first book since they did a reading at an Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library.

YOU CAN REGISTER ONLINE NOW FOR THE CLASS WHICH STARTS WEDNESDAY JANUARY 17th

Advanced Fiction EVENING CLASS