January Over The Edge: Open Reading with Vona Groarke, Nuala Keher, Stephen De Burca PLUS the launch of new issue of Skylight 47

Over The Edge Celebrates Thirteenth Birthday with Readings by Stephen De Burca, Nuala Keher, Vona Groarke who will Launch issue six of Skylight 47 (possibly Ireland’s most interesting poetry publication)

Vona Groarke

Over The Edge  presents the first ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ of 2016 at Galway City Library on Thursday, January 21^st, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Vona Groarke, Nuala Keher, & Stephen DeDurca. The centre piece of the evening will be the launch of issue number six 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 on the evening by Vona Groarke. 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 

Stephen De Burca is a 24 year old writer from Galway City. Currently a philosophy and English student at NUI Galway, Stephen was highly commended in the Over The Edge New Writer of the Year competition 2015. His writing has taken him to an art residency in Iceland in the summer of 2015 and he will be attending art residencies in France as well as the Netherlands this summer.  

Nuala Keher is a native of Galway and works as Academic Director of EQUAL Ireland, a not-for-profit charitable trust. Nuala is a strong advocate for social change both in Ireland and abroad. She has been a key member of the SIPTU trade union movement and spent a year in South Sudan with the Ministry for Education. She is joint author with Eddie Higgins of the non-fiction book ‘Your Rights at Work’ (1998) published by the Institute of Public Administration, Dublin. Nuala also writes fiction and is a participant in Susan Millar DuMars’ Advanced Fiction Writing class. She has been published in Ireland’s Own and was long listed in the 2015 Over the Edge New Writer of The Year competition.

Vona Groarke was born in the Irish Midlands in 1964. She attended Trinity College, Dublin and University College, Cork. She has lived in Dublin, Cork and Dundalk and has been writer-in-residence at NUI Galway and Maynooth. Her collections published by The Gallery Press include Shale (1994), Other People’s Houses (1999), Flight (2002), shortlisted for the Forward Prize (UK) in 2002 and winner of the Michael Hartnett Award in 2003, Juniper Street (2006) and Spindrift (2009) and X (2014), both Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Her poetry prizes include the Hennessy Award, the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize, the Michael Hartnett Award, Strokestown International Poetry Award, the Stand Magazine Poetry Prize, and runner-up in the Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition (2003). In 2008, her version of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s eighteenth-century Irish poem was published as Lament for Art O’Leary. She has been Writer-in-Residence with the National University at Galway and at Maynooth, and was co-holder of the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University (Spring 2004). She now lives in Manchester where she teaches in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. Vona Groarke is a member of Aosdána and is currently editor of Poetry Ireland Review. As well as reading her own work, Vona Groarke will launch the new issue of Skylight 47.

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. Contributors to the new issue of Skylight 47 are particularly welcome to read their Skylight 47 poems at the open-mic; those wishing to take part should get to Galway City Library by 6.20pm, at the latest, and give their names to Kevin Higgins, who 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.

Final Over The Edge: Open Reading of 2015 with leading UK poet Kim Moore, Felicia McCarthy, & Michael Gallagher

The December ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, December 17^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Kim Moore, Michael Gallagher, & Felicia ‘Flish’ McCarthy. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome. The Over The Edge Christmas celebration will take place afterwards. 

Felicia ‘Flish’ McCarthy took an Honours BA and MA in English Language and Literature at Trinity College Dublin. She has lived in Dublin, Denver, & now Salthill where she works as a professional Energy Medicine Practitioner when she is not fooling around with words. She is a regular participant in poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre. She was shortlisted for the 2015 Baillieborough Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Boyne Berries, Infusions, This Never Happened II, and the RNLI anthology The Sea. 

Before switching to prose, Michael Gallagher enjoyed considerable success as a scriptwriter. He has written comedy for the both the BBC and Channel Four and has co-written several plays. In 2014 he won the Galway’s Great Read creative writing competition with his short story, ‘First Light’. Michael is a modest man not given to outlandish boasts or hyperbole and is currently employed as editor of the breathtakingly brilliant free Galway magazine, Westword.

Kim Moore was born in 1981 and lives and works in Cumbria. She is one of the leading new voices in British poetry. Her first full length collection The Art of Falling was published by Seren in April 2015.  She won a New Writing North Award in 2014, an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2012. In 2014 she was Poet in Residence for Ilkley Literature Festival and Digital Poet in Residence for The Poetry School. Her first pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in The Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition, judged by Carol Ann Duffy.  If We Could Speak Like Wolves was chosen as an Independent Book of the Year in 2012 and was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Pamphlet Award and the Lakeland Book of the Year Award. Her work has been anthologised in Salt’s Best British Poetry 2012 and Oxfam’s Lung Jazz.  

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.

 

Over The Edge just received the great news that the Arts Council are increasing the funding we will receive for our literary events in 2016 by 75% compared to this year.

March Over The Edge: Open Reading with Seán Lysaght, Gráinne McHale, & Tim Dwyer

The March ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, March 26^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Sean Lysaght, Tim Dwyer & Gráinne McHale. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome. 

Gráinne McHale is from County Galway. She graduated in 2010 with a BA Fine Art in GMIT Galway and is currently studying for a MA Writing at NUIG. She writes poetry and fiction; has made a number of short films and her artwork has been exhibited both internationally and at home. 

Tim Dwyer lives in upstate New York but has extensive family collections in the west of Ireland. His poetry collection Smithy Of Our Longings- Poems From The Irish Diaspora will be published by Lapwing Publications this month. His poetry has also appeared in such journals as Southword, The Stinging Fly, Boyne Berries, and Galway’s own Skylight 47 poetry paper.

Seán Lysaght

Seán Lysaght was born in 1957 and grew up in Limerick. He now lectures at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and lives with his wife Jessica in Westport, County Mayo. His first collection of poetry, Noah’s Irish Ark was published in 1989, followed by The Clare Island Survey (Gallery, 1991). His work on the life and writings of Robert Lloyd Praeger: The Life of a Naturalist was published by Four Courts Press in 1998. His verse narrative of the life of Edmund Spenser was published under his own imprint in 2011. His subsequent poetry collections, Scarecrow (1998), Erris (2002), The Mouth of a River (2007), his translations after Goethe, Venetian Epigrams and Selected Poems are published by The Gallery Press. His most recent collection Carnival Masks was published in 2014. In 2007 he received the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry.

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 Alvy Carragher, Kate Ennals & Michael Farry PLUS announcement of details of 2014 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition

The February ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, February 27^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Michael Farry, Kate Ennals & Alvy Carragher. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome. The evening will also see the announcement of details of this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, which will then be made available here on our website.   

Alvy Carragher is currently a student on the MA in Writing at NUI Galway. Her poetry has been commended in the Gregory O’Donoghue Award, highly commended in the 2013 Over the Edge New Writer of The year competition and she came third in the 2013 Doire Press Poetry Competition. Alvy is the current Connaught Slam Poetry Champion. Her blog “with all the finesse of a badger” won best humour blog in the Irish Blog Awards and is a finalist for blog of the year in the Samsung Digital Media Awards 2014. 

Kate Ennals completed the MA in Writing in NUI Galway last year. She writes both poetry and fiction. She currently facilitates both poetry and writing workshops in Cavan. Her writing has been published in Crannog, Skylight 47 and the Galway Review. She has had stories and poems in the anthology, From Ballyjamesduff to Belleek, which was published by the International Fund for Ireland. And Kate features in the new anthology, The Adventure Hat, published by the Black Fort Writers. She won third Prize in the Dead Good Poetry Competition, run by the Galway Rape Crisis Centre in May 2013. Kate’s writing will also to be published in the next edition of Burning Bush 2 and Ropes 2014.

Michael Farry is a retired primary school teacher who writes both poetry and non-fiction. His poetry collection, Asking for Directions, was published by Doghouse in 2012 and his book Sligo: The Irish Revolution 1912-23, was published by Four Courts Press in the same year. He is founder and for many years was editor of Boyne Berries magazine published by Boyne Writers Group.

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 EVENING WILL ALSO SEE THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF DETAILS OF THIS YEAR’S OVER THE EDGE NEW WRITER OF THE YEAR COMPETITION. The MC for the evening will be Kevin Higgins. For further details phone 087-6431748.

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

February Over The Edge: Open Reading with Mia Gallagher, Ruth Quinlan & Dawn Wisniewski PLUS details of 2013 New Writer of The Year Competition

Mia Gallagher

Ruth Quinlan, Dawn Wisniewski & Mia Gallagher for February Over The Edge: Open Reading PLUS announcement of details of 2013 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition

The February ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, February 28^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Mia Gallagher, Dawn Wisniewski & Ruth Quinlan. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome. The evening will also see the announcement of details of this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, which will then be made available here on our website.

Ruth Quinlan is from Tralee, County Kerry. She worked in IT before taking a break in 2011 to try and scratch the writing itch and graduated from the MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2012. She was shortlisted for the 2012 Cúirt New Writing fiction prize and longlisted for last year's Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition. Her work has been published by Emerge Literary Journal, Thresholds, SIN, Scissors and Spackle and she is longlisted for the current Irish Independent Hennessy New Irish Writing awards. She recently contributed towards two group anthologies, Abandoned Darlings (fiction) and Wayword Tuesdays (poetry). You can find her blogging occasionally at http://ruthquinlan.wordpress.com.

Despite a lengthy career in the logical world of information technology, Dawn Wisniewski has carved a tunnel into the creative side of her brain, allowing her to formulate everything from poetry to fantasy worlds, and even a little artistry on the side. With the help of Kevin Higgins’ poetry workshops, she has gained not only confidence in her poetic ventures but better skills to craft her prose. Also aided by Susan Millar-Dumars’ classes, Dawn has developed a portfolio of short stories and enhancements to the series of fantasy novels she has written. With the first of the series of novels finally ready for submission, Dawn is actively seeking an agent or publisher. Her blog is http://www.musingsbymd.com

Mia Gallagher is a writer and performer based in Dublin. She has written many short stories and is working on a third novel. Her short fiction won the START Short Fiction award (2005) and was shortlisted for the Fish, Hennessy and William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen Awards. Her debut novel HellFire (Penguin Ireland, 2006) was critically acclaimed and received the Irish Tatler Literature Award. An extract from her second novel Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland appeared last year in Literary Imagination (Oxford University Press). In September 2012, Carpet Theatre produced The Trick and Burning Love, two of her adaptations of plays from the classic if schlocky Grand Guignol Theatre of Horror! In 2012 she appeared as the female lead in TG4 docudrama The Enigma of Frank Ryan, which has shown at film festivals internationally. Mia was writer-in-residence at IADT/dlr Arts Office in 2009-2010.

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 EVENING WILL ALSO SEE THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF DETAILS OF THIS YEAR’S OVER THE EDGE NEW WRITER OF THE YEAR COMPETITION. 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 & The Arts Council.