The
September ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday,
September 27th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Karl MacDermott, Michael
Sheehan, & Mikayla Kelly.
The evening will also see the announcement of the shortlist for this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of the Year
competition, judged by poet Rachel
Coventry. And there will be an open-mic after the Featured
Readers have finished; new readers are always especially welcome.
Mikayla Kelly is a
3rd year Creative Writing student in NUIG who dabbles in poetry when she’s not
playing football, manning the tills or hitting the books. Mikayla got her
first poem 'Shia La Beouf Came to Me in A Dream' published in the 2018 edition
of ROPES literary magazine which was launched at the Cúirt International
Festival of Literature. Originally from Laois, Mikayla’s poems take on a broad
range of subject matter from sport to America to simply growing up and trying
to figure out who you are.
Michael Sheehan is a
writer of novels, short stories and bad poetry. He lives with his family in
Charleville, Co. Cork. He is the 2017 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year,
having won the competition for his story 'A day in the life of Frankie Bones
and Little Maneen'. In July 2018 Dalzell Press published Michael’s book, The Sugar Sugar Café. Michael has had
short stories short/ long-listed for awards including: the Francis
McManus, William Trevor, Over the Edge, Penguin/RTE, Hennessy New Irish
Writing, Carried in Waves, Glimmer Train and Mercier Press Fiction Competition.
 |
| Karl McDermott |
Karl MacDermott was
born in Galway. In 1988 he helped co-found The Comedy Cellar at The
International Bar in Dublin with Barry Murphy, Ardal O’Hanlon and Kevin Gildea.
After appearing in his own one man comedy show at The Peacock in 1989 and
having had successful runs in The Edinburgh Fringes of 1991-93 and also
appearing at The Cats Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny, by the late 1990’s he
stepped back from performing and concentrated on writing. Over the last twenty years he has written
extensively for radio including the comedy series’ Gone But Forgotten and Here’s
Johnny on RTE Radio 1 and The
Mahaffys on BBC Radio 4. He has also written two Plays of the Week for RTE
Radio 1 – Friday Night and Conversations in The Dark. His most recent
book Juggling With Turnips was
published by Eyewear Publishing. The
Sunday Independent found it "a very funny book - the writing is
clever, self-deprecating in a kind of Irish Catholic Woody Allen manner and at
times it's as tender as it is riotous." Meanwhile, The Irish Times stated it is "funny and perfectly
constructed... a wild imagination with wit and wisdom on the human condition...
if laughs are hard currency the book has more than enough to buy plenty of
readers."
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.