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.

May Over The Edge Writers' Gathering - launch of four books PLUS 2018 Poems for Patience Winner

The May Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents an exciting variety of poetry and fiction, including the Galway launch of new poetry collections by Stephanie Conn, Robyn Rowland and Kate Ennals; the launch of Belfast writer Rosemary Jenkinson’s acclaimed new short story collection; and a reading from her work by Ruth Quinlan, the winner of the 2018 Poems For Patience competition. The event will take place at The Kitchen @ The Museum, Spanish Arch, Galway on Friday, May 18^th, 8pm. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Stephanie Conn

Stephanie Conn, from County Antrim, is a graduate of the Creative Writing M.A. Programme at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. She is the winner of the 2015 Funeral Services NI Poetry Prize, the 2015 Yeovil Poetry Prize, the inaugural Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing and the 2016 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition, which culminated in the publication of Copeland’s Daughter. Stephanie has also been shortlisted for many awards, including the 2012 Patrick Kavanagh Award and is the recipient of an ACES award. Her debut collection, The Woman from the Other Side, which we published in 2016, was shortlisted for the 2016 Shine/Strong Award. Stephanie’s follow-up collection entitled Island is published in May, 2018 by Doire Press.

Rosemary Jenkinson

Rosemary Jenkinson was born in Belfast and is an award-winning playwright and short story writer. Her plays include The Bonefire (winner of Stewart Parker BBC Radio Award 2006), The Winners, Johnny Meister + the Stitch, Basra Boy, White Star of the North, Planet Belfast and Meeting Miss Ireland. She won the 2001 Black Hill Magazine Short Story Competition, third prize in the Brian Moore Short Story Awards and was shortlisted for the 2002 Hennessy Award for New Writing. Her first collection of short stories, Contemporary Problems Nos. 53 & 54, was published in 2004 by Lapwing Press. Her second short story collection, Aphrodite’s Kiss & Further Stories, was published by Whittrick Press in 2016. She’s won many General Artist’s Awards from the ACNI and this year she has been awarded Artist-in-Residence at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. Rosemary’s new short-story collection entitled Catholic Boys is published in May, 2018 by Doire Press. 

 

Robyn Rowland

Robyn Rowland is an Irish-Australian citizen living in both countries. She regularly works in Turkey. She has written 13 books, 10 of poetry. Her latest books are Mosaics from the Map (Doire Press, Galway, 2018), which will have its Galway launch on the evening, and her bi-lingual This Intimate War Gallipoli/Çanakkale 1915 – İçli Dışlı Bir Savaş: Gelibolu/Çanakkale 1915 (republished, Spinifex Press, Australia, 2018). Turkish trans. Mehmet Ali Çelikel. Robyn’s poetry appears in national and international journals and in over forty anthologies, including eight editions of Best Australian Poems. Her work is on film at the National Irish Poetry Archives, James Joyce Library, UCD. Dublin.

Kate Ennals

Kate Ennals is a poet and writer and has published poems and short stories in a range of literary and on line journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, Anomaly, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries, North West Words, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain plus many more). In 2017, she won the Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition. Her first collection of poetry At The Edge was published in 2015. Her second collection, Threads, was published in April 2018 and will have its Galway launch on the evening. She has lived in Ireland for 25 years and currently runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan. Kate runs At The Edge, Cavan, a literary reading evening, funded by the Cavan Arts Office. Before doing an MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2012, Kate worked in UK local government and the Irish community sector for thirty years, supporting local groups to engage in local projects and initiatives. Her blog can be found at http://kateennals.com 

Ruth Quinlan

This year Ruth Quinlan’s poem ‘Small Acts of Anticipation’ was the winning entry in Galway University Hospital’s Arts Trust’s hotly contested annual Poems  for Patience competition.   The poem will now be included in the Arts Trust’s Poems for Patience permanent poetry collection, on display in Galway University Hospitals. Ruth Quinlan won the 2014 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Award and the 2012 Hennessy Literary Award for First Fiction. She has been shortlisted or runner-up for other competitions like Cúirt New Writing, the Francis Ledwidge Poetry Awards, and Doolin Writers’ Weekend.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Arts Council,

Poetry Ireland, and Galway City Council.

September Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering at The Kitchen @ The Museum

The September Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents an exciting variety of readings by poets and fiction writers Clara Rose Thornton, Kernan Andrews, Kate Ennals, Susan Lanigan, and Ruth Aylett. The evening will see the launch by Kevin Higgins of Kate Ennal’s debut poetry collection At The Edge, which is just published by Lapwing Press.

 The event will take place at The Kitchen @ The Museum, Spanish Arch, Galway on Friday, September 11^th, 8pm. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Kate Ennals is a poet and writes short stories. She has been published in various literary publications such as Crannog, Skylight 47, Burning Bush 2, The Galway Review, Ropes, Boyne Berries, and North West Words. She has published a novella, Slainté, on Amazon. A Londoner, Kate has lived in Ireland for 21 years and runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan. Her blog can be found at kateennals.com. At The Edge, her debut poetry collection, is just published by Lapwing Press.

Clara Rose Thornton is a spoken word artist, culture journalist, and RTÉ radio and television broadcaster originally hailing from Chicago. She publishes arts and culture criticism internationally, including for the Irish Independent, and her provocative spoken word is performed at festivals and venues across Europe. She is the 2014-15 Dublin Slam Poetry Champion. Meet her at clararosethornton.com and @ClaraRose. 

Kernan Andrews is from Galway and work as the Arts Editor and Political Correspondent of the Galway Advertiser newspaper and its website, www.advertiser.ie . His short story, Im Niemandsland, was published in the anthology Noir By Noir West, published by Arlen House. Kernan will read from, Northern Uproar, his tale of a young Protestant lad in 1970s Northern Ireland whose life is turned upside down by punk and the Sex Pistols.

Ruth Aylett teaches computing and researches artificial intelligence and robotics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. She jointly wrote the collaborative online epic Granite University, performed with Sarah the Poetic Robot at the 2012 Edinburgh Free Fringe and wants to write poems that can enter the lives of everyone everywhere. She has been published by Envoi, Bloodaxe Books, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland, and Doire Press and tweets as ruthaylett; read more at www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/writing.html.

Susan Lanigan, lives in Dublin and is a graduate of the MA in Writing at NUI Galway. He is the author of WWI novel White Feathers. This story of passion, betrayal and war has been shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award 2015, and is published by O’Brien Press Brandon imprint.

For further information contact 087-6431748.

All Welcome. No Cover charge.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support of 

the Arts Council, Poetry Ireland, and Galway City Council.