July Over The Edge Writers' Gathering with Mary O'Donoghue, Eamonn Wall, Elizabeth Reapy, & James Finnegan

July Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents readings by Mary O’Donoghue, Eamonn Wall, Elizabeth Reapy, & James Finnegan.

The July Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents an exciting variety of poetry and fiction. The event will take place on Thursday, July 12th, 6.30pm at Galway City Library, St. Augustine Street. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Mary O’Donoghue’s stories have most recently appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Irish Times, Stinging Fly, Dublin Review, and elsewhere. Her novel Before the House Burns was published by The Lilliput Press in 2010. Awards and recognition for her fiction include the Irish Times prize for short fiction responding to economic crisis; two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships; and longlisting for the Sunday Times/EFG Short Story Award. She is Fiction Editor at the journal AGNI, and Professor of English in the Arts and Humanities division of Babson College, Massachusetts. She lives with her husband and step-daughter in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Eamonn Wall is the author of Junction City: New and Selected Poems 1990-2015 (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2015), among other poetry publications. His prose books include Writing the Irish West: Ecologies and Traditions (Notre Dame, 2011) and From the Sin-é Café to the Black Hills: Notes on the New Irish (Wisconsin, 2000). He recently co-edited Coleridge and Contemplation, published by POETICA (Tokyo). Articles, essays, and poems have been published in The Irish Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Irish Literary Supplement, New Hibernia Review and other publications. An Enniscorthy native, Eamonn Wall lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where he is the Smurfit-Stone Corporation Professor of Irish Studies/International Studies & Programs at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is a past-president of the American Conference for Irish Studies and is currently a vice-president of Irish American Writers & Artists Inc.

Dublin-born James Finnegan has been highly commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Competition, short-listed in Over The Edge New Writer of the Year, short-listed in The Canterbury Anthology for Poet of the Year, and published in The Irish Times – Hennessy New Irish Writing, Poetry Ireland Review, CYPHERS, Skylight47, North West Words, and the anthology The Best New British & Irish Poets 2018. Finnegan, who holds a doctor of philosophy in living educational theory, is married to Livinia and lives outside Letterkenny in the countryside. His first full collection of poems, Half-Open Door, is published by Eyewear Publishing and was launched in Listowel on June 1^st 2018.

Elizabeth (EM) Reapy is originally from Claremorris County Mayo. She currently a Dublin UNESCO City of Literature Writer-In-Residence. Her debut novel Red Dirt is published by Head of Zeus and was awarded Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, September 2017. Elizabeth gave her first major reading at the February 2010 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Arts Council,

Poetry Ireland, and Galway City Council.

Westside Arts Festival/Over The Edge Summer Open-mic

PROBABLY THE BIGGEST LITERARY OPEN-MIC OF THE YEAR

Westside Arts Festival/Over The Edge Summer Open-mic

Over The Edge in association with Westside Arts Festival presents the 2018 Over The Edge Summer Open-mic at Westside Library, Seamus Quirke Road on Wednesday, July 11^th, 5pm-8pm. Those taking part will include visiting students studying creative writing on this year’s NUI Galway International Summer School.

Everyone who has a poem or story to share is most welcome to take part. So, if you have some writing you’d like to read to an audience, this is your opportunity to do so.

The MC for the evening will be Kevin Higgins. All are welcome to attend.

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

June Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents readings by poets Eleanor Hooker, Nathanael O’Reilly, and Anne Casey PLUS Skylight 47

The June Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents an exciting variety of poetry from Galway, Tipperary and Australia. There will be readings by Anne Casey, Nathanael O’Reilly, & Eleanor Hooker PLUS a celebration of the first ten issue of Galway-based poetry newspaper Skylight 47 DETAILS TO BE ANNOUNCED.

The event will take place on Friday, June 29^th, 8pm at The Kitchen @ The Museum, Spanish Arch, Galway. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Anne Casey is originally from Clare and now lives in Sydney. Her poems have appeared internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals, anthologies, podcasts, broadcasts, videos, music albums, a stage show and an international art exhibition. Her debut poetry collection, where the lost things go was published to much acclaim by Salmon Poetry in 2017. She has won or been shortlisted for poetry awards in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. Over a 25-year career, Anne has worked as a business journalist, magazine editor, media communications director and legal author. Further information: http://anne-casey.com/. Twitter: @1annecasey.

Nathanael O’Reilly was born and raised in Australia. He has travelled on five continents and spent extended periods in England, Ireland, Germany, Ukraine and the United States, where he currently resides. His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in ten countries, including Antipodes, Australian Love Poems, Cordite, FourW, Glasgow Review of Books, LiNQ, Mascara, Postcolonial Text, Snorkel, Tincture, Transnational Literature, Verity La and The Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology 2017. O’Reilly is the recipient of an Emerging Writers Grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. He is the author of Preparations for Departure (UWAP Poetry, 2017), named one of the “2017 Books of the Year” in Australian Book Review; Distance (Picaro Press, 2014; Ginninderra Press, 2015); and the chapbooks Cult (Ginninderra Press, 2016), Suburban Exile (Picaro Press, 2011) and Symptoms of Homesickness (Picaro Press, 2010). He was the writer-in-residence at Booranga Writers’ Centre in May 2017.

Eleanor Hooker is a poet and writer. She lives in North Tipperary with her husband Peter, they have two sons. Her second poetry collection, A Tug of Blue (Dedalus Press) was published October 2016. In 2013 her debut, The Shadow Owner's Companion (Dedalus Press) was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for Best First Irish collection from 2012. Eleanor is founder of the Rowan Tree Readings, a reading series that will feature international poets and authors. The series begins June 2018.  Her poetry has been published in Ireland and internationally: in the UK, USA, Germany, Poland, Romania, India and Hungary, and in literary journals including: POETRY (Chicago), PN Review, Poetry Ireland Review, AGENDA Poetry, The Stinging Fly, The SHOp, The Moth, The Irish Times, The Irish Examiner, Crannóg, POEM: International English Language Quarterly, Cyphers. Online, her poems have been published at Southword, New Dublin Press, And Other Poems, Poethead, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Ofi Press, The Pickled Body, Public Pool and broadcast on RTÉ Radio One. Eleanor has read her poetry at literary events in Ireland, USA (Pittsburgh, Washington), India (Mumbai International Literary Festival) and Hungary (Budapest).

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Arts Council,

Poetry Ireland, and Galway City Council.

May Over The Edge: Open Reading with Jacqueline Saphra, Anne Walsh Donnelly, Jessamine O’Connor PLUS launch of issue 10 of Skylight 47

The May ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, May 31^st, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Jacqueline Saphra, Jessamine O’Connor, &Anne Walsh Donnelly. The evening will also see the launch, by Jacqueline Saphra, of issue ten of perhaps Ireland’s most exciting, informative, and accessible poetry magazine Skylight 47. There will be readings by contributors. All welcome.  

Anne Walsh Donnelly lives in Mayo. Her work has been published in literary magazines such as Crannog, Boyne Berries and Inside the Bell Jar. Her stories have been shortlisted in competitions such as the Fish International Prize and RTE Radio One Frances Mac Manus competition. She was highly commended in the OTE New Writer of the Year (Poetry) Award in 2017 and recently won The Blue Nib Poetry Chapbook competition.

Jessamine O Connor facilitates The Hermit Collective arts troupe, The Wrong Side Of The Tracks Writers, and the Ballaghaderreen branch of Failte Isteach conversational English classes. She won the iYeats, the Francis Ledwidge, and the Poetry Ireland Butlers Café poetry competitions, and was short-listed for the Hennessy, Over The Edge, Cuirt New Writing, Galway Hospital Poems For Patience, Bradshaw Books, Leaf Books and Red Line Book Festival competitions. She is currently promoting her fifth chapbook Pact, and her first full collection of poems is coming out with Salmon in early 2020. Jessamine’s website is http://www.jessamineoconnor.com

Jacqueline Saphra

Jacqueline Saphra’s The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye 2011) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women was published by (The Emma Press 2017) won the Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. In 2017 A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller was out from Hercules Editions and her latest collection from Nine Arches Press, All My Mad Mothers, was shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot prize. She lives in London and teaches at The Poetry School. www.jacquelinesaphra.com

Copies of the new issue of Skylight 47 will be on sale on the evening. 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.