February Over The Edge: Open Reading with Grace Wilentz, Meabh Ann McCrossan, & Fiona Foster

The February ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, February 27^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Grace Wilentz, Meabh Ann McCrossan , & Fiona Foster. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished, which this month will include, among others, fiction writers from the MA in Writing at NUI Galway.  New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic. 

Fiona Foster is originally from Hartford, Connecticut, but has lived on the West coast of Ireland for the past fifteen years. She has always enjoyed writing essays and poems, and after participating in several of Kevin Higgins’s workshops, first at Galway Technical Institute and more recently Westside Resource Centre, she had her first poetry published in Issue 8, the Fall 2018 issue, of Light- A Journal of Photography & Poetry. She has previously read her work at the Westside Arts Festival summer open-mic.

Meabh Ann McCrossan is a poet from Galway City and is currently in her final year of a BA Connect Degree with Creative Writing at NUI Galway. After spending a full year solely dedicated to working under the guidance of accomplished writers such as Elaine Feeney and Mike McCormack, she is currently working on her first poetry collection and is focusing on submitting to various publications. Most recently, her poem 'Freya' was published in the Moth's Summer 2019 issue, and she has a number of other smaller publications under her belt. 

Grace Wilentz

Grace Wilentz is a poet based in the Liberties, Dublin. Her poetry has appeared in Irish, British and American journals including Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, The Seneca Review, The American Poetry Journal, The Harvard Advocate, Magma, and The Irish Times. Her work was also featured on a public artwork displayed on the facade of the Abbey Theatre. Her debut pamphlet, Holding Distance, was launched by the Green Bottle Press in October 2019.

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always particularly 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, Poetry Ireland & The Arts Council.

Over The Edge: Open Reading of 2018 with Daniel McBrearty, Evan Costigan, Declan Varley PLUS open-mic

The December ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, December 13^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Declan Varley, Evan Costigan, & Daniel McBrearty. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished which this month will feature, among others, poets studying on the MA in Writing at NUI Galway. New readers are especially welcome. The Over The Edge Christmas celebration will take place afterwards. 

Daniel McBrearty, or Danny to his friends, is a writer of both poetry and prose. The Donegal native's poetry has been published in A New Ulster, and his fiction was chosen as the winner in the Ulster Male category in Hot Press' Write Here Write Now Competition last May. A student of creative writing at NUI Galway, Danny’s writing deals with being young in an irrational world. He has no idea what his writing style is. That’s for other people to decide.

                                                     

Evan Costigan’s poems have been published in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, The Moth, The Stony Thursday Book, Abridged, Cyphers and elsewhere. Selected for the 216 Poetry Ireland Introductions Series, he is a past winner of the Boyle Arts Festival Poetry Competition and the Francis Ledwidge International Poetry Award. In 2017 he won the Red Line Book Festival Poetry Competition and the Oliver Goldsmith Literary Festival Poetry Competition. His work has been shortlisted for a Hennessy Literary Award and selected for the Best New British and Irish Poets Anthology 2018 from Eyewear Publishing. The recipient of several bursaries and residencies, Evan has been a featured reader at festivals and events, including: Electric Picnic; International Literature Festival Dublin; the Art Bar Series, Toronto. Born in Dublin and raised in county Kildare, he has lived abroad most of his adult life. He now divides his time between the west coast of Ireland and Dublin where he works as a creative writing facilitator. His website is www.evancostigan.com.

Declan Varley is a striking new voice in the great tradition of Irish literary fiction. Born in 1965, he grew up in the small town of Ballinrobe in County Mayo, Ireland. In his teens, Declan began his career in writing when he established a weekly magazine with a group of friends. That publication gave Declan the motivation he needed to use words as his trade, writing the college subculture novel Kittyland in 1992, followed by Sure It Could Happen (1993) The Elephant’s Graveyard, (1994) and Nightmusic (2001). A successful career in journalism followed, writing award winning stories for regional, national, and international newspapers. He is currently Group Editor of Galway Advertiser Newspapers. Declan lives in Galway with his wife, Galway Bay fm Head of News Bernadette Prendergast and their daughter, Giselle. His latest novel, The Confession of Peadar Gibbons, was published earlier this year.

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, Poetry Ireland, & The Arts Council.

November Over The Edge: Open Reading with Caroline Healy, Dagmar Drabent, & Gemma Marren

The November ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, November 19^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Caroline Healy, Dagmar Drabent, & Gemma Marren. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. This month’s open-mic will continue our showcase of the poetry students from this year’s MA in Writing at NUI Galway. New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic. 

Gemma Marren was raised in London by Irish parents. She was a finalist in the Irish Writers’ Centre 2015 Novel Fair competition, with the novel The Only Child. She works as a freelance academic copy-editor and when her head is not wedged in a book, she spends her time baking cakes and playing tag rugby. She lives in the wilds of Mayo with her husband and four children.

Dagmar Drabent, originally from Hamburg, Germany, lives in Galway, for nearly 30 years. At the moment she is finishing her PhD about Swiss writer Robert Walser at NUI Galway. She is also an artist and therapist and has been writing poetry and participating in poetry workshops for the past couple of years. Her poems have been published in Crannόg, Skylight 47, Orbis, and Blue Max Review.

Caroline Healy is an award winning writer and novelist. She writes literary fiction and young adult contemporary fiction. A graduate of the Seamus Heaney Centre, Belfast she divides her time between writing and teaching. Her short story collection entitled A Stitch in Time won Doire Press’s International Chapbook Short Story Competition. Her work has featured in publications such as Wordlegs, Prole, the Irish Writers’ Centre Lonely Voice and Five Stop Stories. She is a recipient of multiple awards from the Arts Council. Her work has been showcased at many literary events across Ireland, the U.K. and America. Caroline is currently editing her second short story collection, The House of Water, as well as final edits for her next novel, published with Bloomsbury Publishing.   

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. This month’s open-mic will continue our showcase of the poetry students from this year’s MA in Writing at NUI Galway. 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, Poetry Ireland & The Arts Council.

October Over The Edge: Open Reading with Kitty Holland, & Mike Gibbons PLUS the announcement of the winners of the 2015 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year

The October ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, October 29th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Mike Gibbons,  & Kitty Holland. This is a special Over The Edge event in that both featured writers primarily write non-fiction. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished.  This month’s open-mic will showcase, among others, some of the poetry students from this year’s MA in Writing at NUI Galway.  The evening will also see the announcement of the winners in this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, which received a large number of entries again this year. This year’s competition judge is Dave Lordan. The shortlist can be read here.

Kitty Holland

Kitty Holland is social affairs correspondent of The Irish Times. She has reported widely on such issues as homelessness, drug addiction, poverty, women’s rights, Travellers, immigrants’ rights, asylum seekers, domestic violence and gay, lesbian and transgender rights. In November 2012 she broke the story on the death of Savita Halappanavar, on October 28th 2012, at Galway University Hospital. She has been with The Irish Times since 1998, and has won a number of awards for her work including Journalist of the Year in 2013. She studied History and Politics at Trinity College, Dublin, and completed a Masters in Journalism in Dublin City University. She lives in Dublin with her two children. She is the author of Savita: The Tragedy That Shook A Nation (Transworld Ireland, 2013). 

Mike Gibbons lives in Galway and is the author of Survivor. It was the heyday of the Celtic Tiger. Money was no problem and three successful young businessmen, Damian, Mark and Michael, chartered a helicopter to travel from their homes in Galway to the Tall Ships race in Waterford in July 2005. But on their way back to the west the pilot lost his way because of fog and the helicopter crashed in a forested area on the northern slopes of Slieve Aughty.  Against all the odds one man survived the impact. The injuries to Michael Gibbons’s head, limbs and body were horrific and he will never completely recover, but he did survive.  In Survivor Mike tells his story.

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. This month’s open-mic will feature, among others, some of the poetry students from the MA in Writing at NUI Galway.  New readers are always especially 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, Poetry Ireland, &The Arts Council.