The February ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in
Galway City Library on Thursday, February
26th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Julian Gough, Erin Fornoff & Christine Valters Paintner. There
will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New
readers are especially welcome.
Christine Valters Paintner is the online Abbess of a virtual monastery called
Abbey of the Arts leading retreats and pilgrimages with her husband John of
twenty years. She is the author of eight nonfiction books on spirituality and
creativity including The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with
Monastic Wisdom. Christine is an American living in Galway, where she actually
adores winter and the rain, never tires of finding more monastic ruins, and has
found Ireland to be a wondrous poetic muse.
Appalachian born,
Dublin-based poet Erin Fornoff has
performed her poetry at Glastonbury, Electric Picnic, and dozens of other
festivals and events across the UK and Ireland. In 2013 she was featured at
Farmleigh House' "New Voices' alongside Hozier, came in third at the
Strokestown Poetry Awards, and won the StAnza Slam. She has been published in
The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, New Planet Cabaret, Cyphers, and many others. In
2014 she was selected for the 2014 Poetry Ireland Introductions Series and became
Artistic Director for Lingo, Ireland's first ever spoken word festival. In the
coming months she will open for Hollie McNish on her Ireland tour. She is
working on a novel.
Julian Gough
is
an award winning author who first shot to fame in the 1980s when, as a student
at University College Galway, he was leader singer and lyricist with
alternative rockband Toasted Heretic. He won the BBC National Short Story Award
in 2007 and his The iHole was
shortlisted for the one-off BBC International Short Story Award in 2012. He has
also been shortlisted, twice, for the Everyman Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for
comic fiction. He represented Ireland in Best European Fiction 2010; won a
Pushcart Prize in the US in 2011; and represented Britain in Best British Short
Stories 2012. He is the author of three novels, Juno & Juliet, Jude in
Ireland, and Jude in London; two
radio plays, The Great Hargeisa Goat
Bubble, and The Great Squanderland
Roof; and a poetry collection, Free Sex Chocolate. In 2011, he wrote
the ending to Time Magazine’s computer game of the year, Minecraft. In July 2013 his Kindle Single CRASH! went to number one
in the UK Kindle Single chart in the week of its release. London born and Irish
raised, Julian now lives in Berlin.
Julian Gough |
Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of Galway City Council, Poetry Ireland & The Arts Council.