Final Over The Edge: Open Reading of 2017 with Iggy McGovern, Linda Forde, & Flávia Simas

The December ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, December 14^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Iggy McGovern, Linda Forde, & Flávia Simas. 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. 

Flávia Simas was born and raised in Goiás, Brazil, where she completed her studies and earned a Master's Degree in Linguistics. She moved to Ireland in 2013 to accompany her spouse who got assigned to a project in Tuam. She's also lived in India and the US. Flávia works in Galway as a Customer Service Representative and is interested in the effects, both positive and negative, of Globalisation in people's lives. A Womanist, Flavia is a founding member of two collectives: the Ativismo de Sofá in Brazil and the Galway Feminist Collective in Ireland. Her work has appeared at the Rabble.ie and she also occasionally publishes at Elephant Journal. Flávia is also a yogi, chronically ill, very much alive and a Kate Bush enthusiast. 

Linda Ford is from Wales and has been living in Galway for five years. She has had a varied career, setting up and running her own Art and Craft shop for 15 years before becoming a Business Adviser, Town Regeneration Co-ordinator and then a Business Support Manager. She is now a Personal Performance Coach and Trainer, working with small business owners and teams to reach their goals. In the past, Linda’s writing career involved reports, newsletters and funding bids. Whilst there was often opportunity for extensive creativity in this work, it wasn’t enough for Linda so she joined Susan’s Creative Writing Course at Galway Arts Centre in September 2016. 

Iggy McGovern

Iggy McGovern is Fellow Emeritus in the School of Physics at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of three collections of poetry with Dedalus Press, The King of Suburbia (2005), Safe House (2010) and The Eyes of Isaac Newton (2017). A Mystic Dream of 4 (Quaternia Press 2013) is a poetic biography of the 19^th century mathematician and poet, William Rowan Hamilton. His awards include the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award for Poetry, the Hennessy New Writers Award and the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary.

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.

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.

2017 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year WINNERS

The winner in the Fiction category, and 2017 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year, is Micheál Ó'Síocháin from Cork for his story 'A day in the life of Frankie Bones and Little Maneen'.

Micheál Ó'Síocháin

Micheál receives €700 in prize money, a hamper of books from Kenny's Bookshop, Galway, and will be a Featured Reader at an Over The Edge: Open Reading in the first half of 2018. Doire Press will read, without prior commitment to publish, a collection of short stories submitted to them by Micheál. 

The runner-up in the Fiction category is Richard Newton - Hampshire, UK for his story 'Loose Ends'.

In third place is Kathryn Burke, Dublin for her story 'A Legacy Issue'.


Highly commended in the fiction section are Paula Conway - East Sussex, UK for her story 'Chalk Man'; Niall Bourke, London, UK for his story 'The Hands of The Andes' & Niamh MacCabe, Leitrim for her story 'Steer The Dark Skies Blue'.


The winner in the Poetry category is Caroline Am Bergris, London, UK for her poem 'Graceland'.

Caroline receives prize money of €300 and Salmon Poetry will now read, without prior commitment to publish, a collection of poems submitted to them by Caroline. Caroline will also read her work at an Over The Edge event during 2018. 

The runner-up in the poetry section is Emily Vieweg - Fargo, North Dakota, USA, for her poem 'Bipolar is...'

In third place is Evan Costigan, Kildare for his poem 'Simplex No. 15,604'.

Highly commended in the poetry section are Connie Masterson, County Galway for her poem 'Unholy'; Sighle Meehan, Galway for her poem 'Autumn'; &  Anne Walsh Donnelly, Mayo for her poem 'Odd as Fuck'.

Nicki Griffin

Judge’s comments from Nicki Griffin: 

"In the end 'graceland' came first [in the poetry section], very closely over 'Bipolar is…', because of its careful, clever, original use of language, painting an extraordinary picture of a housing estate and its residents of which the narrator is one. The situations within the poem are often desperate, yet the poem is not gloomy. This is in no way a humorous poem, yet there is a hint of an underlying humour in the descriptions of place and people, a recognition of the strength and resilience of those living in often appalling circumstances.

In the fiction section: every word in 'A day in the life of Frankie Bones and Little Maneen' counts. The characters are utterly believable, brought to life through telling detail. The story is not new, but the writing is fresh with layers of complexity illustrating an impossible dilemma for the narrator. There's a lot of dialogue in this story, written in readable dialect, which is not easy to get right, and each character has a clear, unique voice.

The overall winner was really difficult to pick. But it's 'Frankie Bones and Little Maneen'."

The shortlist from which the winners were chosen is available here. 

Over The Edge would like to thank Charlie Byrne's Bookshop, Kenny's Bookshop & Gallery, Dock No. 1 Bar & Restaurant, Ward's Hotel, Senator Trevor Ó'Clochairtaigh, and Clare Daly T.D. for sponsoring our competition this year. 

October Over The Edge: Open Reading with Angela Nagle, Fiona Neary, & Jonathan Sugarman PLUS announcement of winners of 2017 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year

The October ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, October 26th, 6.30-8.00pm. 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 welcome at the open-mic. The Featured Readers are Jonathan Sugarman,  Fiona Neary, & Angela Nagle. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished.  The evening will also see the announcement of the winners in this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, which received a large number of entries again this year. This year’s competition judge is Nicki Griffin. The shortlist can be read here.

Angela Nagle is a writer for The Irish Times, Jacobin, Current Affairs magazine, and The Baffler. Her first book Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right is published by Zero Books. Jacobin Magazine has said of her “Unlike much of the Left who've grown far too accustomed to marginalization and defeat, Nagle still believes in politics as the only way of changing an increasingly brutal world.” Reviewing Kill All Normies in The Stinging Fly Rob Doyle said “Angela Nagle strikes me as an uncommonly sane voice in a culture war defined by astounding cruelty, extremism and intolerance. Kill All Normies is as absorbing as it is important. I hope everyone reads it.”

Fiona Neary

Fiona Neary started doing creative writing classes at Galway Arts Centre in 2016, is no relation to Bishop Neary and absolutely, unequivocally, utterly no relation to Patrick Neary. She is a former Executive Director of the Rape Crisis Network Ireland and is currently working on a memoir.

Jonathan Sugarman

Jonathan Sugarman is a former executive at Unicredit Bank Ireland in Dublin’s IFSC who resigned in September 2007 after giving a detailed account of enormous liquidity breaches at his bank a year before the financial crash. Mr Sugarman, whose warning were ignored by the Central Bank, launched his book The Whistleblower, published with the help of Luke Flanagan MEP, last December.

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