Friday, December 23, 2011

Over The Edge Celebrates Ninth Birthday with Reading by Leanne O’Sullivan, Damian Cunniffe & Dearbhaile Houston

Leanne O'Sullivan
The first Over The Edge: Open Reading of 2012 takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, January 19th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Dearbhaile Houston, Damian Cunniffe & Leanne O’Sullivan. This is a very special occasion as it is now exactly nine years since Over The Edge was born in Galway City Library in January 2003.

Dearbhaile Houston grew up in Co. Galway. She is in her first year of New Media and English at the University of Limerick, learning the art of procrastination and strong coffee. She began attending Creative Writing classes with Susan Millar DuMars last spring and recently won the Seán Uí Riordáin prize for poetry in the Oireachtas na Gaeilge Literary Competition 2011.

Damian Cunniffe is from Abbeyknockmoy in North County Galway. In 2011 he was longlisted for the Fish Publishing International Short Story Prize, the Ink Tears Prize and was joint winner of the Lonely Voices Short Story Introductions competition run by the Irish Writers Centre. He was also runner-up in the fiction section of the 2011 Over The Edge New Writer Of The Year competition. His work has been published in Crannóg and the Cúirt Journal. Damien has had articles published in several newspapers, including the Galway Advertiser. He is currently working on a play and a collection of short stories.

Leanne O’Sullivan was born on the Beara Peninsula in west Cork in 1983, and now lives in Cork city. Her poetry collections are Waiting for My Clothes (2004) and Cailleach: The Hag of Beara (2009) both published by Bloodaxe Books. Her work has been included in various anthologies, including Selina Guinness’ The New Irish Poets and Billy Collins’s Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry. In 2009 Leanne was awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry bursary; in 2010 she won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature; and in 2011 she received the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry.

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 & The Arts Council.