October Over The Edge: Open Reading with Billy Hutchinson, Fiona Sampson, Rosita Sweetman & John Cunningham

The October ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place on on Zoom on Thursday, October 28th at the usual Over The Edge time 6.30-8.00pm (local Galway time).

 

This is Over The Edge’s annual non-fiction special, at which all of the Featured Readers are writers of non-fiction; however poets and fiction writers are still very welcome at the open-mic. The Featured Readers are John Cunningham, Rosita Sweetman, Fiona Sampson, & Billy Hutchinson. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. Anyone interested in taking part in the open-mic should text Kevin Higgins on 087-6431748 or register their interest on the Over The Edge Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Over-The-Edge-Literary-Events-712507866206899 between 6pm and 6.30pm on the evening of the reading. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. 

 

John Cunningham lectures in history at NUI Galway and is co-director of the Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class. Published extensively on Irish social history and global labour history, he is editor with Ciaran McDonough of a forthcoming volume commissioned by ASP/Arden to mark the bicentenary of James Hardiman’s classic history of Galway. Galway Arts and Culture, 1820-2020 will be in the shops in November. 

 

Born into a big political/legal family in Dublin Rosita Sweetman began writing when she was 10. She’s worked as a journalist with the Irish Press, the Irish Times, the Sunday Independent, as a ‘runner’ and secretary at BBC TV in London, and as a research assistant on RTE TV in Dublin. She has published three best selling books, On Our Knees (1972), On Our Backs, Sexual Attitudes in a Changing Ireland (1979) and a novel Fathers Come First (1974) recently re-published by the Lilliput Press (2015). In 2004 she co-produced an allergy cookbook with her children Chupi and Luke, What To Eat When You Can’t Eat Anything. She is acritic for the Irish Times, the Sunday Independent, and the Dublin Review of Books. Having a survived a marriage break up Rosita re-found her feminism sadly buried, along with her chutzpah. She passionately believes feminism is not about blaming men, or pushing a few women to the top so they can be ‘she-men’ for the patriarchy. It's about creating a world fit for everyone. Of everything she has created her two adult children Chupi and Luke are way and above the most precious. Her most recent book, Feminism Backwards – part memoir, part documentary – was published last year by Mercier Press. 

 

 photo by Ekaterina Voskresenskaya

Fiona Sampson is a leading British poet and writer, published in thirty-eight languages, who has received a number of awards in the US, India and Europe. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, of the English Association and of the Wordsworth Trust, she’s published twenty-seven books and received an MBE for Services to Literature.Emeritus Professor of the University of Roehampton, she has served on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature and is a Trustee of the Royal Literary Fund. Other honours include the Newdigate Prize, Cholmondeley Prize, Hawthornden Fellowship, and numerous awards from the Arts Councils of England and of Wales, Society of Authors, Poetry Book Society and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as well as variousnational Book of the Year selections.She recently received the 2019 Naim Frashëri Laureateship of Albania and Macedonia, and the 2020 European Lyric Atlas Prize, Bosnia.She’s also a broadcaster and newspaper critic, librettist and literary translator, and was editor of Poetry Review 2005-12. Her internationally acclaimed In Search of Mary Shelley was shortlisted for the Biographers’ Club Slightly Foxed Prize, and Two-Way Mirror: The life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (UK - Profile; US – W.W. Norton) appeared to critical acclaim this spring.

 

 Billy Hutchinson is the current leader of the Progressive Unionist Party and a Belfast City Councillor for the Court Ward. In the early 1970s Billy was involved in the formation of the Young Citizen Volunteers and was later influential in brokering the loyalist ceasefire of 1994. He was involved in the negotiations which led to the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday 1998 and was nominated by the UVF as their interlocutor with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning chaired by General John de Chastelain. Billy’s memoir, My Life In Loyalism, was published by Irish Academic Press last November. https://irishacademicpress.ie/product/my-life-in-loyalism/

 

Over The Edge is inviting you to the October Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom. Thursday, October 28th, 6.30-8pm

Join The Over The Edge Zoom Meeting at

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7389013549

Meeting ID: 738 901 3549

 

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially welcome. For further details phone 087-6431748.

 

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