SPRING Over The Edge announces EVENING CLASS in Advanced Fiction Writing with Susan Millar DuMars STARTS WEDNESDAY May 13th

THE CLASS TAKES PLACE on WEDNESDAY EVENINGS, 7-9pm for 8 week. 

STARTING WEDNESDAY, May 13th. Maximum Number students: 5. Each student will receive close individual attention. 

Price: €140 for 8 weeks payable in advance. There are no refunds. To guarantee a place you must pay in advance. If you have been struggling with a short story or a novel, this is the class for you. 

CLASS DESCRIPTION: this class is for those serious about writing short or long fiction; those who are working on a fiction project independently and feel they need feedback and support. From week one, each student will be responsible to email an extract from their story or novel to Susan Millar DuMars and their classmates by Monday noon.  Students will also bring hard copies of the piece into class. Students can submit up to 5 double spaced pages each week. In each session we will provide feedback to each student. Susan’s feedback will be detailed as it will be based on her earlier reading of the work. Thus, each student will receive detailed feedback on a total of 40 pages of work.


The class is organised by Over The Edge literary events and will take place at 3 Carbry Road, Newcastle, Galway. Five minutes from NUI Galway. Parking available. For directions see map.

ABOUT THE TUTOR: Susan Millar DuMars’ debut poetry collection, Big Pink Umbrella, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2008. Her next collection, Dreams for Breakfast, appeared in April 2010. Her work features in Landing Places, Dedalus’ 2010 anthology of immigrant poetry written in Ireland; and also in The Best Of Irish Poetry 2010. A fiction writer as well, she published a collection of short stories, American Girls, with Lapwing in 2007. She published a book of short stories in 2010: Lights in the Distance, published by Doire Press, and was the Featured Fiction writer in the American online magazine The Atticus Review. She has been the recipient of an Arts Council Literature Bursary. Susan's third collection of poetry, The God Thing, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013; her fourth collection, Bone Fire, was launched recently at the Cúirt Festival of International Literature. She lives in Galway, where she and her husband have run the Over the Edge readings series since 2003. Susan edited the anthology Over the Edge – The First Ten years, published by Salmon, which includes work by forty seven writers who have published a first book since they did a reading at an Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library. Susan's New & Selected Poems was published by Salmon Poetry in Spring 2019.

YOU CAN REGISTER ONLINE NOW FOR THE CLASS WHICH STARTS WEDNESDAY MAY 13th

Advanced Fiction EVENING CLASS

February Over The Edge: Open Reading with Grace Wilentz, Meabh Ann McCrossan, & Fiona Foster

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 Grace Wilentz, Meabh Ann McCrossan , & Fiona Foster. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished, which this month will include, among others, fiction writers from the MA in Writing at NUI Galway.  New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic. 

Fiona Foster is originally from Hartford, Connecticut, but has lived on the West coast of Ireland for the past fifteen years. She has always enjoyed writing essays and poems, and after participating in several of Kevin Higgins’s workshops, first at Galway Technical Institute and more recently Westside Resource Centre, she had her first poetry published in Issue 8, the Fall 2018 issue, of Light- A Journal of Photography & Poetry. She has previously read her work at the Westside Arts Festival summer open-mic.

Meabh Ann McCrossan is a poet from Galway City and is currently in her final year of a BA Connect Degree with Creative Writing at NUI Galway. After spending a full year solely dedicated to working under the guidance of accomplished writers such as Elaine Feeney and Mike McCormack, she is currently working on her first poetry collection and is focusing on submitting to various publications. Most recently, her poem 'Freya' was published in the Moth's Summer 2019 issue, and she has a number of other smaller publications under her belt. 

Grace Wilentz

Grace Wilentz is a poet based in the Liberties, Dublin. Her poetry has appeared in Irish, British and American journals including Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, The Seneca Review, The American Poetry Journal, The Harvard Advocate, Magma, and The Irish Times. Her work was also featured on a public artwork displayed on the facade of the Abbey Theatre. Her debut pamphlet, Holding Distance, was launched by the Green Bottle Press in October 2019.

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

2020 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop

The 2020 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase, featuring Emily Cullen, Michael Gorman, Mary Madec, Geraldine Mills, Jenny Farrell, Anne Walsh Donnelly, Katherine Noone, Patrick Stack, Aoife Reilly, Nicola Geddes, Christine Valters Paintner, Knute Skinner, Susan Millar DuMars, Ruth Quinlan, Lorraine Carey, Kevin Higgins, Rachel Coventry, Liam O’Neill, Art Ó Suilleabháin, Danielle Holian, Mary Melvin Geoghegan, and the anthologies The Children of the Nation: An Anthology of Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland (Culture Matters, edited by Jenny Farrell & Mike Quille) & Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, edited by Pat Boran & Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi) will take place at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop on Friday, February, 7^th starting at 6pm. The event will be jointly MCed by Kate Ennals and Kevin Higgins. 

In this annual retrospective of the year just past, poets based in the West of Ireland, who published a new collection of poems during 2019, are invited to read three poems from the collection in question. There will also be readings from the anthologies The Children of the Nation & Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets, to which several Galway-based poets contributed.

All welcome. There is no cover charge. For further details phone 087-6431748.

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

January Over The Edge: Open Reading - Over The Edge Celebrates 17th Birthday with Louise Kennedy, Orla Fay, & Attracta Fahy

The January ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, January 23rd, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Attracta Fahy, Orla Fay, & Louise Kennedy. All welcome. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished which this month will include, among others, fiction writers from the MA in Writing at NUI Galway.  New readers are especially welcome. This reading celebrates the seventeenth anniversary of the first Over The Edge reading in Galway City Library and there will be a birthday party afterwards. 

Attracta Fahy works as a Psychotherapist, lives in Co.Galway, and has three children. She completed her MA in Writing NUIG in 2017, and participates in the Over The Edge poetry workshops. Her poems have been published in The Irish Times, Banshee, Poetry Ireland Review, Poethead, Coast to Coast to Coast, Orbis, Crossways, The Curlew, North West Words, Honest Ulsterman, Four x Four, Boyne Berries, The Cormorant, Enthralled, The Blue Nib, Burning House Press, Elixir, Bangor Literary Journal, A New Ulster, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon, and several other magazines and journals at home and abroad. She was shortlisted for 2018 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year, and was a Blue Nib nominee for a Pushcart prize. Her debut poetry pamphlet will be published by Fly On The Wall Poetry (UK) early in 2020.

Orla Fay lives in County Meath is the editor of Boyne Berries. Recently her work has been published in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, ROPES 2019, Quarryman, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Bangor Literary Journal and FourXFour. She was shortlisted for The Cúirt New Writing Prize 2019, longlisted for the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award 2019 and won 3rd place in The Oliver Goldsmith Poetry Award 2019. She blogs at http://orlafay.blogspot.com

Louise Kennedy

Louise Kennedy lives in Sligo and her fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly, Banshee and The Tangerine. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award 2019. Bloomsbury will publish The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, her debut collection of short stories, in early 2021. 

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.