August Over The Edge: Open Reading with Bobbie Sparrow, Art Ó Súilleabháin, & Ailbhe Darcy

The first ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ after the summer break takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, August 31^st, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Ailbhe DArcy, Art Ó Súilleabháin, & Bobbie Sparrow. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. The evening will also see the announcement of the long list for the 2017 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition which received a large number of entries again this year.
 

Bobbie Sparrow is a poetry writing Psychotherapist living in Co. Galway.  She was long listed for the Over The Edge new writer's award 2015/16 and short listed for the Galway University Poetry Competition 2016. Her poems have been published in Orbis, Picaroon, and The Rose Magazine. Bobbie has taken part in many poetry workshops with Kevin Higgins and Jim Bennet of Poetry Kit. She is a member of the online poetry group, Poets Abroad.  Bobbie has found a good poem to be a good friend.

Art Ó Súilleabháin was born in Galway, spent a few years in Boston but now lives in Corr na Móna, in north Connemara. He has published a number of books for children as Gaeilge but is now working on poems and stories in English for adults. His work has been regularly broadcast on RTE Radio One’s Sunday Miscellany. He lives on the shores of Lough Corrib with his artist son Fiachra, one of his six children.

Ailbhe Darcy

Ailbhe Darcy grew up in Dublin, and has since lived in the United States, Germany and Wales, where she teaches creative writing at Cardiff University. Selections of her work are included in the Bloodaxe anthologies Identity Parade and Voice Recognition, and in the Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol 4. Her first full-length collection was ImaginaryMenagerie, published by Bloodaxe Books in 2011. A collaboration with S.J. Fowler,  Subcritical Tests, was published by Gorse in June 2017. Recent poems have appeared in POETRY, Poetry Ireland Review and Poetry Wales, and a second solo collection, Insistence, is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in 2018.

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always most welcome. The evening will also see the announcement of the long list for this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, which has again received a very healthy number of entries this year. 

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

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

Over The Edge goes to EastSide Arts Festival in Belfast

May Over The Edge: Open Reading with Eileen Battersby, Kathryn Guille, & Chris Connolly

The May ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, May 25^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Eileen Battersby, Chris Connolly, & Kathryn Guille. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome. 

Kathryn Guille

Kathryn Guille is an American writer and choreographer living in Limerick City. Her screenplay, Enemy of the Freak State, has won the David Dortort Prize for Screenwriting, and her play, Venla and Henry has won the Alice Stark Award for Playwriting. Kathryn is a founding member of the New York Time’s acclaimed Ateh Theatre Group. She was an Off-Broadway and regional fight director and actress for over ten years before moving to Ireland. Kathryn holds a BFA from NYU’s TISCH School of the Arts, and an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York. Kathryn was the winner of the 2016 Cúirt New Writing Poetry Prize. She is now a participant in the Thursday afternoon Advanced Poetry Workshop at Galway Arts Centre.

Chris Connolly

Chris Connolly writes fiction and was born in Dublin in 1983. In 2016, for his short stories, he won both the RTE Francis McManus Award and the Hennessy Award for Emerging Fiction. He is also the 2016 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year and this featured reading is part of prize. Novelist Niamh Boyce, who judged the 2016 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year and chose Chris as her overall winner, had this about his winning story: ‘There's no one new around you’,  showed an awareness of form usually found in poetry and applied it to a short story. It worked because it expressed the tensions within the story, the tensions in life to conform, to contain something that cannot be contained

Eileen Battersby

Eileen Battersby is literary correspondent of the Irish Times. She has written about all aspects of the arts, particularly classical music and literature, as well as archaeology, historical geography and architectural history and has championed fiction in translation. Four times winner of the Arts Journalist of the Year award, she has most recently won the Critic of the Year. Her first novel Teethmarks On My Tongue was published late last year by Dalkey Archive Press to very favourable reviews by, among others, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Edmund White in The Huffington Post. 

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always most welcome at the open-mic. 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.

February Over The Edge: Open Reading with Jaki McCarrick, Ciaran Ferriter, & Paul Lewis

The February ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, February 23^rd, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Jaki McCarrick, Ciaran Ferriter, & Paul Lewis. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic. 

Jaki McCarrick

Paul Lewis was born in Cork and lived there for many years, enamoured of the city's many charms. He now lives in Galway where he continues to work as a cook. Daily preparing vegetables for hours allows Paul time to "write in his head". Some of this makes it onto the page. Paul is very much looking forward to his first reading outside of writing workshops. He has participated in writing workshops with both Susan Millar DuMars and Kevin Higgins and, so far, lived to tell the tale.  

Ciaran Ferriter works in catering in a top secret location in Galway. He lives in rural Mayo, where the peace cajoles him to write every evening without fail. His first ever submission was published by the Mayo Advertiser called the 'Passing Storm' which has proved very popular online. Currently he is working with Susan Millar DuMars, in her Advanced Fiction class, on a major project which is a very complicated work, entwining biblical history, treachery, espionage and a Pope who has been earmarked by extremists to join his creator. Ciaran has only been writing seriously for two years and intends to add another twenty two to that if life permits.

Jaki McCarrick lives in Dundalk and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, gaining a Master of Philosophy Degree, Creative Writing – Distinction. Jaki is a playwright and short story writer who is also working on a novel. Her critically acclaimed short story collection The Scattering was published in 2013 by Seren and shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. She has won many awards for her work including: Winner of the 2005 SCDA National Playwriting Competition for The Mushroom Pickers; Shortlisted for the Sphinx Playwriting Award 2006, Bruntwood Prize 2006, Kings Cross Award 2007 for The Moth-Hour; Shortlisted for the 2009 Adrienne Benham Award for Leopoldville and the 2009 Asham Award for short fiction for The Congo. Jaki was also the first ever winner of the Liverpool Lennon Paper Poetry competition, which she was awarded by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. Jaki McCarrick's blog is jakiscloudnine.blogspot.ie

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always particularly welcome. 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.

January Over The Edge: Open Reading with Tim Sniffen, Helena Kilty, & Vinny Steed

The January ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, January 19^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Vinny Steed, Helena Kilty, & Tim Sniffen. This reading marks the fourteenth anniversary of the first Over The Edge reading in Galway City Library.

Tim Sniffen

Vinny Steed has had work published abroad and at home.  His poems have featured in the Galway Review, Headstuff, Skylight 47, Crannóg, Into the Void, Tales from the Forest magazine and in the upcoming Ofi Press magazine in February.  He was long listed for the 2015 & 2016 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition and short listed for the 2016 Doolin poetry competition.  One of his poems was recently nominated by Into the Void for the Pushcart Prize.  He attends poetry workshops in the Galway Arts Centre.

Helena Kilty lives in Galway, where she divides her time between writing and working as a psychotherapist. She’s currently completing a collection of short stories. She also writes non-fiction and poetry. She’s a member of the Galway Writers’ Workshop and completed the MA in writing at NUI Galway in 2012. Her work has been published in Surge: New Writing From Ireland (O’Brien Press), Skylight47, Crannóg, Poems in profile and in the Abandoned Darlings anthology.

Tim Sniffen studied writing and animation at Hampshire College and began working with Chicago’s Second City theater in 2003: credits there include The Second City Guide To The Opera, Death of a Streetcar Named Virginia Woolf and the recent Longer! Louder! Wagner! -- The Second City Wagner Companion, because who doesn’t like taking a few jabs at Hitler’s favourite easy-listening music? Tim has written for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, National Public Radio and keeps his own Tumblr site for things that everyone else refuses to print. You can find him as MisterSniffen on Twitter for jokes and the occasional David Versus Goliath squabble with airlines and movie theaters.

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always most welcome. 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.

December Over The Edge: Open Reading with Mary Lee, Helena Kane, & Matthew Caley

The December ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, December 15^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Matthew Caley, Helena Kane, & Mary Lee. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome. The Over The Edge end of year celebration will take place afterwards. 

Mary Lee was born in Curramore – a small village west of Headford. She has a background in psychotherapy and spirituality and draws on her former experience to write and work part time as a facilitator and psychotherapist. Her poems have appeared in Skylight 47; Orbis; Crannog; The Linnet’s Wings; The Galway Literary Review; The Poet’s Search for God; The Furrow and Spirituaity. Her work has also been broadcast of RTE Radio’s The Living Word. Her poetry collection Bloom was published recently by Matthew James Publishing Ltd. She now lives in Galway and is a participant in the Advanced Poetry Workshop at Galway Arts Centre.

Helena Kane grew up in East Galway but now lives in Galway city. She is a retired teacher so now finally has the time to pursue her interest in writing. When her children grew up she began to attend writing classes and has been working on a novel for the past four years. Titled `The Long, Long Road `, it starts in the Fifties. It’s about a young girl, Maire, who was in an Industrial school from the age of seven. She was allowed to leave there when she was sixteen. She enjoys her freedom for a while but through naivety and ill-luck she ends up in a Magdalen Laundry. There is no baby involved. She plans her escape with the help of a young man she met at a dance while she was free. Helena Kane is currently taking part in Susan Millar DuMars’s Advanced Fiction Writing Class.

Matthew Caley

Matthew Caley’s Thirst (Slow Dancer, 1999) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and followed by The Scene of My Former Triumph (Wrecking Ball Press, 2005), Apparently (Bloodaxe Books, 2010); his ‘lost second collection, Professor Glass (Donut Press, 2011); and his fifth collection, Rake (Bloodaxe Books, 2016). His work has been included in many anthologies, including Roddy Lumsden’s Identity Parade (Bloodaxe Books, 2010) and John Stammers’ Picador Book of Love Poems. He has also co-edited Pop Fiction: The Song in Cinema with Stephen Lannin (Intellect, 2005). He lives in London with artist Pavla Alchin and their two daughters.

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always most welcome. 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.