Eleventh Annual Cúirt Over The Edge New Writers' Showcase Reading

Since its inception in 2006 the New Writing Showcase has grown to become one of the most important platforms for emerging writers in Ireland. This year’s Cúirt Over The Edge New Writing Showcase features three participants from the Over the Edge literary series in Galway – Aoife Reilly, Erin Fornoff, & Michelle Coyne – Kathryn Guille, the winner of the Cúirt New Writing Poetry Prize 2016 and John O’Donnell, the winner of the 2016 Cúirt New Writing Fiction Prize. The MC for the event will be regular Over The Edge host Susan Millar DuMars. It takes place on Wednesday, April 20^th, 3pm, at The Town Hall Theatre. Entry is free of charge. All welcome.

Michelle Coyne, Erin Fornoff, & Aoife Reilly

Michelle Coyne lives in Galway with her husband and two small boys, and works with computer software. Michelle has had short stories published in Ropes, Crannóg, wordlegs and Silver Apples, and was Long listed for the 2014 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Award. Her story ‘The Sniper’ came third in the 2015 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition. Michelle was a Featured Reader at the January 2015 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

Aoife Reilly is originally from Laois, but has been living in Galway since 2012. She works as a psychotherapist and teacher and has been attending Kevin Higgins’s poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre since Autumn 2013. Aoife’s poetry has been published in Crannóg, Skylight 47, on the Poethead website, and in a wide variety of other poetry magazines recently. Aoife was a Featured Reader at the August 2015 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

Appalachian born, Dublin-based poet Erin Fornoff has performed her poetry at Glastonbury, Electric Picnic, and dozens of other festivals and events across the UK and Ireland. She has been published in The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, New Planet Cabaret, Cyphers, and many others. In 2014 she was selected for the 2014 Poetry Ireland Introductions Series and became Artistic Director for Lingo, Ireland's first ever spoken word festival. She is also working on a novel. Erin was a Featured Reader at the February 2015 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

Kathryn Guille

Kathryn Guille is an American writer and choreographer living in Limerick City. Her screenplay, Enemy of the Freak State, has won the David Dortort Prize for Screenwriting, and her play, Venla and Henry has won the Alice Stark Award for Playwriting. Kathryn is a founding member of the New York Time’s acclaimed Ateh Theatre Group. She was an Off-Broadway and regional fight director and actress for over ten years before moving to Ireland. Kathryn holds a BFA from NYU’s TISCH School of the Arts, and an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York. Kathryn is the winner of the 2016 Cúirt New Writing Poetry Prize. 

John O'Donnell

John O’Donnell’s work has been published and broadcast widely. Awards include the Irish National Poetry Prize, the Ireland Funds Prize and the Hennessy Award for Poetry in 1998. His fiction has been published in the Sunday Tribune, the Sunday Independent, The Stinging Fly, and online in Books Ireland and the Irish Times. Promise, his first short story, was published in 2011 and was broadcast on RTE’s The Book On One. In 2013 his story Shelley won the Hennessy Award for Emerging Fiction. He lives and works in Dublin. John is the winner of the 2016 Cúirt New Writing Fiction Prize.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support of The Arts Council, Galway City Council, and Poetry Ireland, and our ongoing partnership with the Cúirt Festival of International Literature.

Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust is seeking entries again for its exciting annual poetry competition

CRITERIA: poems entered in the competition should be no more than 30 lines long. They must be the original work of the entrant. Poems previously published in magazines or poetry collections are eligible. Multiple entries are accepted; poets can enter as many poems as they wish.

PRIZE 
*the winner will have her or his poem published and displayed on the Arts Corridor of University Hospital Galway as part of the 2016 Poems For Patience. Poems For Patience is a long running series which over the past decade has featured poems by leading Irish and international poets such as Seamus Heaney, Philip Schultz, Jane Hirschfield, Michael Longley, Vona Groarke, Tess Gallagher and many more. The poems after exhibition on the Arts Corridor are then displayed in waiting areas throughout Galway University Hospitals.
*the winner will be invited to read his or her winning poem at the launch of the 2016 Poems For Patience at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature in April 2016.
*the winner will be provided with accommodation in Galway for one night during the 2016 Cúirt International Festival of Literature
*the winner will be given a copy of their poem printed as a Poem for Patience poster
*the winner will be asked to submit six poems for consideration to be a Featured Reader at the Over The Edge: Open Reading series in Galway City Library. 

ENTRY FEE: to enter one poem the fee is €10. If you enter two or more poems the entry fee is €7.50 per poem i.e. to enter two poems it costs €15, to enter three poems €22.50 and so on.


Payment should be made by cheque or postal order payable to Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust. 

Entries should be sent by post to Margaret Flannery, Arts Director, Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust, Galway University Hospitals, University Hospital, Newcastle Road, Galway. Do not put your name on the poems; please include your contact details on a separate sheet. 

THE CLOSING DATE is Friday, March 11th 2016.

THE JUDGE: The competition judge is Kevin Higgins. Kevin Higgins is Writer-in-Residence with Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust. He facilitates poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre; teaches creative writing at Galway Technical Institute and on the Brothers of Charity Away With Words programme. Kevin also teaches poetry on the NUI Galway Summer School programme and on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme. He is the poetry critic of the Galway Advertiser. Kevin is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events. His first collection of poems The Boy With No Face was published by Salmon in February 2005 and was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award. His second collection, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in March 2008 by Salmon. His work also features in the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Ed Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe, 2014). Frightening New Furniture, his third collection of poems, was published in 2010 by Salmon Poetry. Mentioning The War, a collection of his essays and reviews was published by Salmon in 2012. Kevin has read his work at most of the major literary festivals in Ireland and at Arts Council and Culture Ireland supported poetry events in Kansas City, USA (2006), Los Angeles, USA (2007), London, UK (2007), New York, USA (2008), Athens, Greece (2008); St. Louis, USA (2008), Chicago, USA (2009), Denver, USA (2010), Washington D.C (2011), Huntington, West Virginia, USA (2011), Geelong, Australia (2011), Canberra, Australia (2011), St. Louis, Missouri (2013), Boston, Massachusetts (2013) & Amherst, Massachusetts (2013). His poetry has been translated into Greek, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, & Portuguese. Kevin’s fourth collection of poetry, The Ghost In The Lobby, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2014. Kevin is satirist-in-residence with the alternative literature website The Bogman’s Cannon. His next book 2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins will be published by NuaScéalta very early in 2016. Song of Songs 2:0 – New & Selected Poems will be published by Salmon in Spring 2017.

For further details: Tel: +353 (0)91 544979 Email: Margaret.Flannery@hse.ie