Readings from Noir by Noir West @ Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop

Readings from Noir by Noir West

@ Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop

On this Friday, 29^th, August @ 6pm.

Featured readers:

Elizabeth Power,

Conor Montague,

Hedy Gibbons-Lynott,

Alan Caden.

All welcome.

Congratulations Nicki Griffin!

Congratulations to Nicki Griffin whose debut poetry collection, Unbelonging, has been shortlisted for the very prestigious 2014 Shine/Strong Award for best first collection. 

Nicki Griffin grew up in Cheshire in the north west of England but has lived in East Clare since 1997. She completed an MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2009. She won the 2010 Over the Edge New Poet of the Year prize and in 2012 was awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council. She writes for Inland Waterways News and co-edits poetry magazine Skylight 47. Her first work of non-fiction, The Skipper and Her Mate, was published by New Island in 2013. Unbelonging, her debut poetry collection, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013.  Her second collection, due in 2016, will also be published by Salmon.

Nicki won the poetry section in the Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition in 2010. Part of her prize was that Salmon Poetry  would read, without prior commitment to publish, a manuscript of her poems. The collection, eventually titled Unbelonging, was published last year by Salmon and was in the opinion of the Shine/Strong Award judges one of the best five first collections published in Ireland during the past year. 

If you are a poet who has yet to publish a full collection of your poems, perhaps you should enter this year's Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition? Salmon Poetry will, similarly, read, without prior commitment to publish, a manuscript of poems submitted to them by the winner in the poetry section.  

Nicki Griffin is also a regular participant in the Advanced Poetry Workshop at Galway Arts Centre, facilitated by Kevin Higgins. If you are a poet interested in taking your poetry to the next level, perhaps you might want to join one of the poetry workshops, which all start up again in September. For details, see here.  

Majella Kelly, Mary McGill & Jane Williams for August Over The Edge: Open Reading

The first ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ after the summer break takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, August 28^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Australian poet Jane Williams, Mary McGill & Majella Kelly. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. The evening will also see the announcement of the long list for this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, which received a very healthy number of entries again this year, an increase on last year. 

Jane Williams

Majella Kelly is a native of Tuam, Co. Galway. A graduate of UCC she also holds an MA in Modern Drama Studies from UCD. She teaches English, French and Italian in St. Colman's College, Claremorris, Co. Mayo. She was short listed for the Cuirt New Writing Prize and The Fish Poetry Prize 2014. She is also a photographer, half of the creative duo known as Fotissima. She just started writing in September 2013 when she signed up for a creative writing class with Susan Millar DuMars and is now a regular attendee at Kevin Higgins Tuesday Nights poetry workshop. Her first poem will be published in the Autumn issue of Skylight 47.

Mary McGill lives in Galway.  Her fiction has appeared in The South Circular, The Bohemyth, Crannóg and Wordlegs. In 2013, she was shortlisted for the Penguin / RTÉ Guide short story competition and the Irish Times ‘Legends of the Fall’ competition. Mary was also long listed for the 2013 Over the Edge award and short listed for the 2014 RTÉ Radio One Francis MacManus Award. She tweets at @missmarymcgill and blogs at missmarymcgill.com. 

Jane Williams was born in England in 1964 to an Irish father and Australian mother. She has lived all her adult life in Australia where her poetry has been widely published since the early 1990’s. Awards for her poetry include the Anne Elder Award for her first book outside temple boundaries, the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize and the D.J.O'Hearn Memorial Fellowship. She is co-editor of the new online literary magazine, Communion. Jane’s most recent collection of poems, Days Like These: New and selected poems 1998-2013, was published last year by Interactive Press.

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always most welcome. The evening will also see the announcement of the long list for this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, which received a very healthy number of entries again this year.

The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. For further details phone 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support of Galway City Council & The Arts Council. 

Certificate in Screenwriting at NUI Galway

Certificate in Screenwriting

Have you an interest in screenwriting or do you enjoy writing about your ideas, but want to develop your writing skills?

If so, the Certificate in Screenwriting at NUI Galway will verse you in the craft of screenwriting, and will help you to explore and express your own ideas in an encouraging and supportive teaching environment.

The teaching format comprises screenings and lectures on one evening per week (Thursday: 18.30 – 21.30), from September 2014 to May 2015.  Each module of the programme will have a practical output with students being required to write a short film script or drama proposal.

To find out more about this exciting one-year course, please visit www.nuigalway.ie/adultlearning or contact the

Centre for Adult Learning & Professional Development 

– 091 492144

July Over The Edge Writers' Gathering with Eamon Grennan AND the best of Skylight 47

Eamon Grennan

July Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering

at Galway City Library

on Thursday, July 10^th

presents a rare reading by renowned poet

Eamon Grennan,

PLUS

Kernan Andrews, Eleanor Hooker & Drucilla Wall

share their favourite poems from the first three issues of Skylight 47

probably Ireland’s most interesting poetry publication

The July Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering which takes place at Galway City Library on Thursday, July 10^th, 6.30-8pm will feature a rare reading by renowned American-based, Irish poet Eamon Grennan and a reading by Kernan Andrews, Eleanor Hooker, and Drucilla Wall of their favourite poems from the first three issues of Skylight 47, probably Ireland’s most interesting poetry publication. Copies of the magazine will be on sale on the evening and can also be purchased online http://skylight47poetry.wordpress.com/buy-skylight-47/.

Skylight 47 is edited by Nicki Griffin, Susan Lindsay, Ruth Quinlan, Marie Cadden, and Bernie Crawford, participants in Poetry Workshops, facilitated by Kevin Higgins, at Galway Arts Centre.  

Eamon Grennan was born in Dublin in 1941 and educated at UCD, where he studied English and Italian, and Harvard, where he received his PhD in English. The Gallery Press has published his poetry collections Wildly For Days (1983), What Light There Is (1987), As If It Matters (1991), So It Goes (1995), Selected and New Poems (2000), Still Life with Waterfall (2001), The Quick of It (2004), Out of Breath (2007) and But the Body (2012). From 1974 he taught at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, until he retired as the Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English. He teaches in the graduate writing programmes of New York University and Columbia University. Eamon divides his time between the US and the west of Ireland.

Drucilla Wall was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She teaches poetry and essay writing, and Native American literature, at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has earned awards and fellowships for her work, including the Mari Sandoz Prairie Schooner Short Story Award, the Western Literature Association Willa Pilla Prize for Humor in Writing, and University of Nebraska Fling and Larson Fellowships. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and has spent summers with family and friends in Wexford and Galway, Ireland, since 1985. Her debut collection of poetry, The Geese at the Gates, was published in 2011 by Salmon Poetry and warmly reviewed in the Irish Times and elsewhere.

Eleanor Hooker lives in North Tipperary. She has an MPhil in Creative Writing (Distinction) from Trinity College, Dublin. She is a founding member and Vice-Chairperson of the Dromineer Literary Festival. She is a helm and Press Officer for the Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. In 2011: she was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. In February 2012, her debut collection of poetry, The Shadow Owner’s Companion was launched by The Dedalus Press. Eleanor Hooker is the judge for this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, the deadline for which is Wednesday, August 6^th. http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.ie/2013/08/2014-over-edge-new-writer-of-year-to-be.html

Kernan Andrews is from Galway and is the arts editor and political correspondent of the Galway Advertiser. He writes short stories in his spare time and has been published in The Galway Review and elsewhere. He has read his work at the Cúirt Festival in 2013 and 2014; as part of the launch for NUI Galway's theatre events in the Galway Fringe Festival 2013; and at numerous Over The Edge open mics. Kernan was a Featured Reader at the August 2013 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

All welcome. There is no entry fee.

Over the Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support 

of Galway City Council and the Arts Council.