Sunday, May 17, 2020

2020 Over The Edge / Cúirt New Writers Showcase videos

The 2020 Cúirt Festival New Writers Showcase reading was to have taken place this year at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway on Wednesday, April 22nd. 
The writers selected to take part this year, chosen via anonymous submission by the Cúirt Festival committee, are fiction writters Rory Duffy and Aisling Keogh, and poet Sarah Padden.

Rory Duffy       
Rory Duffy lives in Athlone. His fiction has been published in several journals including Crannóg, The Stony Thursday Book, Southword, and Penduline Press. He was highly commended in the Over the Edge New Writer of The Year competition in 2015 and won the 2016 Over The Edge Annual Fiction Slam. Also in 2016 Rory was placed 3rd in the PJ O'Connor Awards and was also short listed for the Frances MacManus Award. In 2017 he was nominated for a ZeBBie Award by the Irish Writers Guild for his radio play Paulo in the Underworld. Rory was also highly commended in the Seán Ó'Faoláin Award in 2017. Currently his favourite bird is the common swift (Apus Apus) but this may change. Rory was a Featured Reader at the May 2019 Over The Edge: Open Reading. 

Aisling Keogh
Aisling Keogh is a psychotherapist and a stay at home mother to three young children. Her short stories have been published with The Irish Independent, Crannog Magazine, Wordlegs, Ropes, Bangor Literary Journal and A New Ulster. Her first published short story, "How to Save a Life," was shortlisted for the Hennessy Irish Literary Awards in 2011. She finished writing her first novel in 2018, was recently shortlisted for the Doolin Writers’ Weekend short story prize, and is currently submitting her novel to agents and publishers. In her free time Aisling likes to sing and play the guitar badly. Aisling was a Featured Reader at the February 2019 Over The Edge: Open Reading. 

Sarah Padden
 
Sarah Padden is of Irish descent and was raised in West Yorkshire. She returned to live in her dad’s county of Mayo over a decade ago and moved to Galway, to attend NUIG. Since living in Galway, she has attended Kevin Higgins’s poetry workshop and many Over The Edge events. Her poetry has been published in the 2017 anthology Washing Windows? Irish Women Write Poetry (Arlen House). She has also had poems published in Skylight 47, ROPES, A New Ulster, & Freehand. She won the June 2017 Galway Poetry Slam and was shortlisted for both the Over The Edge New Writer of the Year 2017 competition and the Poems for Patience Competition 2018. Sarah was a Featured Reader at the January 2019 Over The Edge: Open Reading. 

As this year's showcase could not take place physically, due to the Covid - 19 crisis, Susan Millar DuMars came up with the idea of asking each of this year's Showcase participants to make a video of their reading which would then be produced by Dave Lordan. The resulting videos are below.