Over The Edge

Westport Arts Festival is running a poetry competition again this year in memory of their greatly missed friend, Dermot Healy.Judges, Geraldine Mills and Gerard Reidy.

Prizes: 1^st prize-€500, 2^ndprize-€200, 3^rd prize-€100.

Cost of entry: €3 per poem, 4 entries for €10, unlimited entries.

Closing date for entries: Friday September 4^th, 2015

THE RULES: Entries must not have been, by the date of submission, published or broadcast in any medium. Entries must be the entrant’s own work. Entries should consist of no more than 40 lines. Entrants are advised to keep copies of their own work as entries will not be returned. The adjudicators will not enter into any correspondence concerning the competition. The decision of the adjudicators is final. You may enter as often as you like, provided entries are accompanied by the appropriate fees. Entries must be typed, using only one side of the page. No indication of the writer’s identity may appear on the poem(s) entered.

Postal entries and accompanying entry forms should be sent in an A4 envelope to: Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition, c/0 Westport Chamber of Commerce, The Fairgreen, Westport, Co. Mayo, Ireland. All cheques accompanying postal entries should be made payable to Westport Arts Festival. Please do not enclose cash.

Winners will be announced during the Festival on Thursday, Oct 1^st 2015. Short- listed entrants will be notified one week in advance and invited to attend. There will be an Open Mic night at the Creel Restaurant, Westport Quay before the prize winners are announced.

Entry Form

For more information and to enter online visit http://westportartsfestival.com

Name:

Email:

Address:

Telephone number:

Number of poems entered:

Entry Fee:

The first ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ after the summer break takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, August 27^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Jessica Traynor, Matt Flesk & Aoife Reilly. 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.

Aoife Reillyis 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.

Matt Fleskis originally from Tuam, and now lives just outside Galway City. He is a retired school teacher and has completed a number of creative writing classes with Susan Millar DuMars, including her Advanced Fiction Writing Class. Matt was short-listed for 2014 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year.

Jessica Traynor was born in Dublin in 1984. Literary Reader at the Abbey Theatre and a creative writing teacher, she has published poems in a variety of magazines and journals and her work is included in a number of anthologies including If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song (Dublin’s One City One Book, 2014) and The New Planet Cabaret Anthology. She won the 2011 Listowel Poetry Prize and the Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year Award in 2013. She was awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary in 2014. Liffey Swim, Jessica’s debut collection of poems, was published last year by Dedalus Press and shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award for best first collection by an Irish poet. She has recently been commissioned to write a poem as part of the Poet’s Rising project, sponsored by the Arts Council, to mark the 1916 Rising.

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, Poetry Ireland, & The Arts Council.

The January ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, January 22^nd, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Liz Quirke, Michelle Coyne, & Paula Cunningham. This reading marks the twelfth anniversary of the first Over The Edge reading in Galway City Library.

Paula Cunningham was born in Omagh and lives in Belfast where she works as a dentist. Her chapbook A Dog called Chance was a winner in The Poetry Business Competition in 1999. She has also written drama and short fiction. Her first full-length poetry collection Heimlich's Manoeuvre, Smith/Doorstop 2013, was shortlisted for the Fenton-Aldeburgh, Seamus Heaney Centre, and Strong Shine First Collection Prizes.

Michelle Coynehas been writing intermittently since she learned to pick up a pencil, but began in earnest in January 2012. She lives in Galway with her husband and two small boys, and works with computer software for pay during the week, the commute providing ample time for working out sticky plot points. Last year, after the birth of her second son, Michelle enrolled in Susan’s intermediate writing class, and is currently taking the advanced class to help hammer her debut novel into shape. 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.

Liz Quirkelives in Spiddal, Co Galway with her partner and daughter. Her poems have been published in Southword, The Stony Thursday Book, The Galway Review, Boyne Berries, Revival Literary Journal, Skylight 47 and The Poetry Bus. She has been both shortlisted and longlisted in the Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Competition in 2012 and 2014 respectively. She won the 2012 Edmund Spenser Poetry Competition at the Doneraile Literary and Arts Festival. One of her poems was nominated for consideration for the 2014 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.

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.

The February ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, February 26^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Julian Gough, Erin Fornoff & Christine Valters Paintner. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome.

Christine Valters Paintner is the online Abbess of a virtual monastery called Abbey of the Arts leading retreats and pilgrimages with her husband John of twenty years. She is the author of eight nonfiction books on spirituality and creativity including The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom. Christine is an American living in Galway, where she actually adores winter and the rain, never tires of finding more monastic ruins, and has found Ireland to be a wondrous poetic muse.

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. In 2013 she was featured at Farmleigh House'"New Voices' alongside Hozier, came in third at the Strokestown Poetry Awards, and won the StAnza Slam. 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. In the coming months she will open for Hollie McNish on her Ireland tour. She is working on a novel.

Julian Goughis an award winning author who first shot to fame in the 1980s when, as a student at University College Galway, he was leader singer and lyricist with alternative rockband Toasted Heretic. He won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2007 and his The iHole was shortlisted for the one-off BBC International Short Story Award in 2012. He has also been shortlisted, twice, for the Everyman Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction. He represented Ireland in Best European Fiction 2010; won a Pushcart Prize in the US in 2011; and represented Britain in Best British Short Stories 2012. He is the author of three novels, Juno & Juliet, Jude in Ireland, and Jude in London; two radio plays, The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble, and The Great Squanderland Roof; and a poetry collection, Free Sex Chocolate. In 2011, he wrote the ending to Time Magazine’s computer game of the year, Minecraft. In July 2013 his Kindle Single CRASH! went to number one in the UK Kindle Single chart in the week of its release. London born and Irish raised, Julian now lives in Berlin.

Julian Gough

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always most welcome at the open-mic. 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.

The 2015 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase featuring Louis de Paor, Sarah Clancy, Gerry Hanberry, Edward O’Dwyer, Edward O’Dwyer, Celeste Augé, Mary Madec, the Amach! LGBT anthology of poetry and creative writing anthology, Quincy Lehr, Kevin Higgins, The Hundred Years’ War: Modern War Poems (Bloodaxe, edited by Neil Astley), Jean Kavanagh, and Tom Duddy will take place at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop on Friday, February, 13^th at 6.30pm.

In this annual retrospective of the year just past, Galway-based poets, who published a new collection of poems during 2014, are invited to read three poems from the collection in question. There will also be a reading from Tom Duddy’s posthumously published poetry collection The Years (HappenStance Press); short readings from the anthologies Amach! LGBT anthology of poetry and creative writing, & The Hundred Years’ War: Modern War Poems; and a special guest appearance from the fiction anthology Noir by Noir West (published by Arlen House, edited by James Martyn Joyce).

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.

This year's festival programme again includes the annual New Writers' Showcase co-organised by Cúirt & Over The Edge. The full festival programme will be available on the Cúirt website from Wednesday.

The Over The Edge March Writers’ Gathering presents readings by visiting and Galway writers and poets. Kathy D’Arcy, Angela Carr, Dave Lordan, Pearl O’Kennedy, & Lorna Shaughnessy will read their work at The Kitchen @ The Museum, Spanish Arch, Galway on Friday, March 13^th, 8pm.

Lorna Shaughnessy was born in Belfast and lives in Co. Galway, Ireland. She has published two poetry collections, Torching the Brown River and Witness Trees (Salmon, 2008 and 2011), and her work was selected for the Forward Book of Poetry, 2009. She is also a translator of Spanish and South American Poetry. Her most recent translation was of poetry by Galician writer Manuel Rivas, The Disappearance of Snow (Shearsman Press, 2012), which was shortlisted for the UK Poetry Society’s 2013 Popescu Prize for translation. She lectures in Spanish and Creative Writing in NUI, Galway.

Pearl O’Kennedy is a native of Shantalla in Galway City, where she worked for many years with homeless young people. She is a visual artist and well known art teacher. Pearl has been a participant in Kevin Higgins’ Monday morning creative writing class at Westside Resource Centre. Her recently published book I Remember, I Remember: Galway Stories And Memories has received very favourable reviews and is selling well.

Dave Lordan latest collection of poetry is Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains(Salmon Poetry). He is a researcher for the RTE Poetry Programme, he teaches at the Centre of Poetry Studies in DCU as well as at The Bog Smoke Writing Factory, and he runs the creative community website http://www.bogmanscannon.com

Angela Carr is a poet and writer, based in Dublin, with work published in a number of Irish and UK literary journals including Mslexia, Abridged, Crannog and Bare Fiction. Three times shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Award, she won the Cork Literary Review Poetry Manuscript Competition 2013, the Allingham Poetry Competition 2014 and was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introduction series. Her debut collection, How to Lose Your Home & Save Your Life, is published by Bradshaw Books. More at www.adreamingskin.com

Kathy D’Arcy is a young Cork poet whose collections Encounter (Lapwing) and The Wild Pupil (Bradshaw) were published in 2010 and 2012 respectively. Tom McCarthy has described her work as 'among the best poems I have read in years.' In 2013 she was awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary, and in 2014 she was the recipient of an Irish Research Council grant to undertake a PhD with UCC's Creative Writing department. She originally qualified and worked as a doctor, and now teaches creative writing as well as working with homeless teenagers in the city.

There is no entrance fee. All welcome. For further information contact 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of the Arts Council, Poetry Ireland, and Galway City Council.

The Over The Edge: Open Readings in Galway City Library are known for their large, supportive audiences. Over the past decade many now established poets and fiction writers have taken their first steps at these legendary readings. As part of the ‘I Will Arise and Go Now’ Festival, which is taking place in Gort to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the birth of W.B. Yeats, Gort Library is facilitating a special Yeats Commemorative Over The Edge: Open Reading. The event takes place at Gort Public Library on Wednesday, March 18th 6.30-8pm.

The Featured Readers are Susan Lindsay, Christopher Meehan & Marion Cox; each of the Featured Readers will begin by reading their favourite W.B. Yeats poem. The MC for the event, Kevin Higgins, will also read his favourite Yeats poem. There will, as is usual at Over The Edge events, be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. Everyone who has a poem, or page or two of a story, they’d like to try out on an audience is most welcome to come along and participate.

Gort Public Library

Marion Cox lives in County Galway where she runs a HR and Management advisory service. With a passion for words and literature, she found herself inexplicably rising in the ranks of international business and has worked at senior executive level in multinationals in the US and Europe. Having somewhat recovered, she organises the Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering at Coole Park and takes poetry classes with Kevin Higgins. Marion’s prose and poetry has been published in The Healing Pen, Writing for Wellbeing (Patricia McAdoo), The Citroen Quarterly (North America) and Irish Left Review. Last year, she was a featured reader with the Galway Girls at An Béal Binn, Erris Festival of Words, Belmullet. Marion was a Featured Reader at the December 2014 Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library.

Christopher Meehan hails from Kilkee in County Clare. In 2012 he was shortlisted for the Fish International Poetry Prize while in 2013 he was placed 3^rd in the Over-The Edge New Writer of the Year Competition. His poems have been published in Skylight 47, Boyne Berries, Crannog, ROPES 2014 and online in The Galway Review.

Susan Lindsay second collection of poetry Fear Knot was published by Doire Press in 2013. She was a founding co-editor of Skylight 47, ‘possibly Ireland’s most interesting poetry publication’ and has been member of Skylight Poets writers’ workshop and the poetry reading group at Oranmore library. She facilitates conversations mediated by poetry and she read for the 2011 Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. Susan was a Featured Reader at the March 2006 Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library.

There will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished, which is open to everyone. The MC for the evening will be Kevin Higgins. For further details phone 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the financial support of Galway City Council, Poetry Ireland, The I Will Arise And Go Now Festival, & The Arts Council.

The March ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, March 26^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Sean Lysaght, Tim Dwyer & Gráinne McHale. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome.

Gráinne McHale is from County Galway. She graduated in 2010 with a BA Fine Art in GMIT Galway and is currently studying for a MA Writing at NUIG. She writes poetry and fiction; has made a number of short films and her artwork has been exhibited both internationally and at home.

Tim Dwyer lives in upstate New York but has extensive family collections in the west of Ireland. His poetry collection Smithy Of Our Longings- Poems From The Irish Diaspora will be published by Lapwing Publications this month. His poetry has also appeared in such journals as Southword, The Stinging Fly, Boyne Berries, and Galway’s own Skylight 47poetry paper.

Seán Lysaght

Seán Lysaght was born in 1957 and grew up in Limerick. He now lectures at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and lives with his wife Jessica in Westport, County Mayo. His first collection of poetry, Noah’s Irish Ark was published in 1989, followed by The Clare Island Survey(Gallery, 1991). His work on the life and writings of Robert Lloyd Praeger: The Life of a Naturalist was published by Four Courts Press in 1998. His verse narrative of the life of Edmund Spenser was published under his own imprint in 2011. His subsequent poetry collections, Scarecrow(1998), Erris (2002), The Mouth of a River (2007), his translations after Goethe, Venetian Epigrams and Selected Poems are published by The Gallery Press. His most recent collection Carnival Masks was published in 2014. In 2007 he received the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry.

Creative Writing for Beginnerswith Kevin Higgins takes place one evening per week (Monday) from 7-9.30pm (8 weeks) with a mid-term break. It commences on Monday, April 13^th, 2015. Advance booking is essential. Places cost €120. Kevin Higgins will provide writing exercises for, and give gentle critical feedback to, those interested in trying their hand at writing stories, poems, or memoir.

To book a place go to http://www.gti.ie/aeapply/course/detail/t/70/c/201502-003923

Intermediate Creative Writingwith Susan Millar DuMars takes place one evening per week (Tuesday) from 7-9.30pm (8 weeks). It commences on Tuesday, April 14th, 2015. Advance booking is essential. Places cost €120. This class is suitable for those who’ve participated in creative writing classes before or begun to have work published in magazines. Flexible exercises and work-shopping of assignments, together with the study of the works of published writers, will help each class member to find their own writing voice.

To book a place go to http://www.gti.ie/aeapply/course/detail/t/70/c/201502-003933

YOU CAN ALSO BOOK in person at Galway Technical Institute, Monday-Friday, (10am-4.30pm).

For further information contact Galway Technical Institute, Father Griffin Road, Galway, phone 091-581342 or email info@gti.ieorsee http://www.gti.ie

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 New Writing Showcase features three participants from the Over the Edge literary series in Galway – Alvy Carragher, Mary McGill, & Teresa Sweeney - Daniel Roy Connelly, the winner of the Cúirt New Writing Poetry Prize 2015, and Sonya Gildea, the winner of the 2015 Cúirt New Writing Fiction Prize. The MC for the event will be regular Over The Edge host Susan Millar DuMars. It takes place on Thursday, April 23^rd, 4pm, at The Town Hall Theatre. Entry is free of charge. All welcome.

Alvy Carragher recently completed the MA in Writing at NUI Galway. Her poetry has been commended in the Gregory O’Donoghue Award, the 2013 Over the Edge New Writer of the year competition and she came third in the 2013 Doire Press Poetry Competition. Alvy was 2014 Connaught Slam Poetry Champion and her blog “with all the finesse of a badger” won best humour blog in the Irish Blog Awards and was a finalist for blog of the year in the Samsung Digital Media Awards 2014. Alvy was a Featured Reader at the February 2014 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

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. Mary was a Featured Reader at the August 2014 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

Teresa Sweeney is from county Galway. She was short listed in the 2014 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition. Her fiction has been published in Roadside Fiction, Number Eleven Magazine, Wordlegs, Boyne Berries and she was a runner up in the WOW! Awards 2011. She was a Featured Reader at the November 2014 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

Daniel Roy Connelly is a theatre director, writer and professor of English literature and creative writing at John Cabot University and The American University of Rome. He holds a PhD in Shakespeare's 'Othello' from The University of Saint Andrews and was the winner of the 2014 Fermoy International Poetry Festival Prize and a finalist in the 2015 Aesthetica Magazine Creative Writing Prize. He recently directed a sold-out 'Hedda Gabler' and returns to the stage next week at Rome's 'Teatro Arciliuto', where he will play 'Ralph Wantage' in Bryony Lavery's 'Frozen'. Daniel is the winner of the 2015 Cúirt New Writing Poetry Prize.

Sonya Gildea was born in County Cork, Ireland. She lives and works in Dublin, and the east coast of Scotland. She is writing the poetry collection Apothecary; the short story collection, Heartscapes; and the debut novel, The Hours That God Sends. She has also received a number of awards for screenwriting. She is the winner of the 2015 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.

Starting in early May, Galway Arts Centrepresents a daytime class for all those beginner and continuing creative writing students out there, facilitated by Susan Millar DuMars. Susan Millar DuMars writes both poetry and fiction. A collection of her stories, Lights In The Distance, was published in December 2010 by Doire Press; she has published three collections of poetry, Big Pink Umbrella (2008), Dreams For Breakfast (2010) & The God Thing (2013) all with Salmon Poetry. Susan is the Featured Fiction writer in the current issue of the American online magazine The Atticus Review.She is also co-organiser of the Over The Edge reading series which specifically promotes new writers. Susan recently edited the anthology Over the Edge – the first ten years, published by Salmon, which includes work by forty seven writers who have published a first book since they did a reading at an Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library.

The class is suitable for both beginning and continuing creative writing students, working in either poetry or fiction. Students will spend their weeks responding to writing exercises designed to inspire, rather than inhibit. In class, they will receive gentle feedback on their work from their classmates and from the teacher. The class takes place on Monday afternoons, 2.30-4pm, commencing on Monday, May 11^th. It runs for 8 weeks.

The cost to participants is 90 Eurowith an 80 Euro concession price. Booking is essential as places are limited. There are no refunds once the class has started. For booking please contact Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, phone 091 565886 or email info@galwayartscentre.ie

Starting in May, Galway Arts Centre is offering aspiring poets a choice of three poetry workshops, all facilitated by poet Kevin Higgins, whose best-selling first collection, The Boy With No Face, published by Salmon Poetry, was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish poet. Kevin’s second collection of poems, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in 2008 by Salmon Poetry and his poetry is discussed in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry. His third collection Frightening New Furniture was published in 2010 by Salmon. His work also appears in the generation defining anthology Identity Parade –New British and Irish Poets (Ed. Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe April 2014). A collection of Kevin’s essays and book reviews, Mentioning The War, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2012. Kevin’s poetry has been translated into Greek, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, Japanese & Portuguese. His fourth collection of poetry, The Ghost in the Lobby, was published last year by Salmon. Last year, Kevin's poetry was the subject of a paper 'The Case of Kevin Higgins, or, The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire' presented by David Wheatley at a Symposium on Satire at the University of Aberdeen.

Each week Kevin will give participants a poetry writing exercise for the following week and will offer each participant constructive suggestions as to how her or his poem can become the best possible poem it can be.

Kevin is an experienced workshop facilitator and several of his students have gone on to achieve publication success. One of his workshop participants at Galway Arts Centre won the prestigious Hennessy Award for New Irish Poetry, two have won the Cúirt New Writing Prize, and yet another the Cúirt Poetry Grand Slam, while several have published collections of their poems; two being shortlisted for the Shine-Strong Award for Best First Collection of poems. In 2013 a group of his students set up the poetry newspaper Skylight 47, which publishes new poems, reviews of poetry books and opinion pieces about poetry related matters. Kevin teaches poetry on the NUI Galway Summer School programme and mentors poetry students on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme. Kevin is also co-organiser of the successful Over The Edge reading series which specialises in promoting new writers.

Each workshop will run for eight weeks, commencing the week of May 12^th. They will take place on Tuesday evenings, 7-8.30pm (first class May 12^th); on Thursday afternoons, 2-4pm (first class May 14^th) and on Friday afternoons, 2-3.30pm (first class May 15th).

The Tuesday evening and Friday afternoon workshops are open to both complete beginners as well as those who’ve been writing for some time. The Thursday afternoon workshop is an Advanced Poetry Workshop, suitable for those who’ve participated in poetry workshops before or had poems published in magazines. The cost to participants is €90, with an €80concession rate.

Places must be paid for in advance. To reserve a place contact reception at Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, phone 091 565886 or email info@galwayartscentre.ie

The May Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents readings by Irish poets and fiction writers Paul Perry, Anne Irwin, Rachael Hegarty, James O’Toole, and visiting Australian poet Ross Donlon. Rachael Hegarty was the winner of the fiction section in the 2014 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, judged by Eleanor Hooker, and will read her winning story. Over The Edge is currently taking entries for 2015 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year; this year the competition is judged by poet, fiction writer, and literary activist Dave Lordan, who edits The Bogman’s Cannon, by far the liveliest online literary publication in Ireland. For full details of the 2015 competition see here.

The event will take place at The Kitchen @ The Museum, Spanish Arch, Galway on Friday, May 15^th, 8pm. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Rachael Hegartyis a fiction writer and poet from Finglas, Dublin. She is the seventh child of a seventh child and a Ph.D. candidate at the Seamus Heaney Centre, QUB. Widely published in anthologies, journals and newspapers, she performs at festivals, rock concerts and for radio broadcasts. This summer she plans to teach her kids bareback riding on Travellers’ ponies while her husband ain’t looking. Rachael won the fiction prize in the 2014 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition and will read her winning story, ‘Betty’.

Paul Perry is the author of five collections of poetry, including Gunpowder Valentine: New and Selected Poems (The Dedalus Press). Among his honours are The Hennessy New Irish Writer of The Year Award, The Listowel Prize for Poetry and The Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship which he was awarded this year. As Karen Perry, he has co-written the International Bestseller The Boy That Never Was. A second Karen Perry Novel appears in June entitled ONLY WE KNOW. He lives in Dublin.

Paul Perry

Anne Irwin lives in Galway. Her poetry has been published in many magazines including Skylight 47, ROPEs, Emerge, Irish Left Review, RNLI’s anthology The Sea and shortlisted in the 2013 Over the Edge New Writer of The Year competition, & Galway University Hospital Arts Trust’s 2015 Poems for Patience competition, and long listed for W.O.W 2013. competitions. She is a member of The Tuesday Knights whose anthology of poetry “Wayword Tuesday” was shortlisted for the Writers’ Circle Anthology Award 2013.

James O’Toole is a native Galwegian. His poetry has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Skylight 47, and also in literary magazines in the United States. James is currently a participant in the advanced poetry workshop at Galway Arts Centre and his work features in the group’s anthologies. He was highly commended in 2010 ‘Over the Edge’ New Writer of the Year competition and has been long listed four times. James O’Toole’s first collection of poems, The Street, which will be published in the autumn and launched at Charlie Byrne’s bookshop.

Australian poet Ross Donlon thinks there might be family in the audience tonight, since Donlons seem to hail from Galway. Ross is a winner of a couple of international poetry prizes and spoken word events and has had a sequence of poems produced for national radio in Australia. He is widely published at home but has also had poems published in The Poetry Ireland Review, Crannóg, The (sadly missed) SHOp and Skylight 47. He has read at festivals across Australia and in Ireland and England. A frequent visitor to Europe, his most recent book of poems, Sjovegen (The Sea Road) was launched in Norway this year and, as well as this reading in Galway, Ross will be reading from it in Romania and England before going home in August.

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.

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 Advertisernewspaper 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.

2015 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year

LONGLIST

FICTION

Betsy Carreyette

Michelle Coyne

Eamonn McGuiness

Angela Finn

Paul Duffy

Melanie Lohan

Fergal Ó’Dubhghaill

Edward Jecky

Selina Oram

Margaret Cahill

Aidan Hynes

Katie McDermott

Lauren Foley

Chris Connolly

Anne Hayden

Dermot Duffy

Adam Trodd

Brian Leeson

Mark Stevenson Curry

Valerie Ryan

John Butler

A.M. Shine

Barbara Leahy

Michael Sheehan

Niall Bourke

Paul Anthony Corbett

Armel Dagorn

Anne Donnelly

Audrey Molloy

Maeve Galvin

P.J. Moore

Eleanor O’Reilly

L.S. Harding

Martin Halliday

Alex Reece Abbott

POETRY

Breda Spaight

Nollaig Rowan

Dagmar Drabent

James Anthony

Niall Bourke

Vincent Steed

Anne Irwin

Sighle Meehan

James O’Toole

Jessamine O’Connor

Stephen De Burca

Aoife Reilly

Majella Kelly

Gerard Gallen

Rachel Coventry

Kevin Murtagh

Clifton Redmond

Ruth Aylett

Annesley Downey

Hannah Kiely

Bobbie Sparrow

Judy O’Kane

Wilma Kenny

Maresa Sheehan

Maurice Devitt

Paul McCarrick

Rob Childers

Ginny Sullivan

Jayne Brogan

Dawn Wisniewski

Lindsey Bellosa

Lisa Allen

Liz Quirke

Stephanie Klapp

Helena Kilty

Bennet McNiff

Gavan Duffy

Bernie Ashe

Marion Cox

We would like to thank our competition sponsors:

Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop,

Dock No. 1, ISupply Flood Street, Ward’s Hotel, Clare Daly TD,

Kenny’s Bookshop &Derek Nolan TD

This year's competition judge is Dave Lordan

THE LONGLISTED WRITERS ARE INVITED

TO READ FROM THEIR LONGLISTED WORK

@ the Over The Edge Culture Night event

@ Kenny’s Bookshop & Gallery,

Liosbán Retail Park on Friday, September 18^th

The fiction writers reading starts 4pm.

The reading by poets: 6pm

THE SHORTLIST WILL BE ANNOUNCED @

The September Over The Edge: Open Reading

on Thursday, September 24^th

THE WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED

@ the October Over The Edge: Open Reading

in Galway City Library,

Thurs October 29^h

Julian Gough

Over The Edge is holding two special Culture Night open-mics - one for fiction writers, the other for poets - with prizes for the best readers, at Kenny’s Bookshop & Gallery, Liosbán Retail Park, Tuam Road, Galway on Friday, September 18^th.

The open mic for fiction writers starts at 4pm. Participants should bring along two pages of a story to read.

The open mic for poets starts at 6pm. Participants poets should bring along two poems to read.

The evening will be MCed by Kevin Higgins and will also see a reading from their long-listed stories and poems by some of the writers on the long list for the 2015 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, for which Kenny’s is one of the generous sponsors. All long-listed writers, who can make it to Kenny’s on the day, are invited to come and read.

The long list for 2015 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year is available here.

Katherine Noone & Andrea Lutz to read with Patrick Kavanagh Award winner Rafiq Kathwari

The September ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, September 24^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Rafiq Kathwari, Andrea Lutz, & Katherine Noone. The evening will also see the announcement of the shortlist for this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of the Year competition, judged by poet, fiction writer, and literary activist Dave Lordan.

Katherine Noone’s poems have appeared in Boyne Berries, Crannóg, The Galway Review, Linnets Wings, Orbis , Skylight 47. She was shortlisted for the Vallum (Canada) poetry competition in 2012 and Poem for Patience 2015. She attends Kevin Higgins advanced poetry workshop in Galway.

Andrea Lutzwas born in Germany, where she worked as a teacher before moving to Ireland in 2012. She has published articles and short stories in the online magazine thecheers.org. One of these articles was selected for publication in a Danish school book. Andrea founded the writing group Galway International Writers, which is now in the process of compiling an ebook. Andrea’s short fiction has been published in The Galway Review; her first published poem appeared early this summer in Silver Apples Magazine.

Rafiq Kathwari is the first non-Irish recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, in the 44-year history of the award. He lives in Ballyoonan, County Louth. He has lived most of his adult life in New York, but was born, as he puts it, “a Scorpio at midnight” in the disputed Kashmir Valley, where he has been working for many years as a social entrepreneur, empowering women artisans. Rafiq has translated from the original Urdu selected poems of Sir Mohammed Iqbal, one of the handful of great South Asian poets of the 20th century writing in Urdu. He divides his time between New York, Dublin and Kashmir. Rafiq’s debut poetry collection, In Another Country, is just published by Doire Press.

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.

FICTION

Michelle Coyne

Paul Duffy

Selina Oram

Aidan Hynes

Lauren Foley

Chris Connolly

Niall Bourke

Dermot Duffy

Adam Trodd

Brian Leeson

Mark Stevenson Curry

Paul Anthony Corbett

Maeve Galvin

POETRY

Breda Spaight

Niall Bourke

Jessamine O’Connor

Stephen De Burca

Majella Kelly

Rachel Coventry

Wilma Kenny

Paul McCarrick

Jayne Brogan

Lisa Allen

Bennet McNiff

Bernie Ashe

We would like to thank our competition sponsors:

Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop,

Dock No. 1, ISupply Flood Street, Ward’s Hotel,

Clare Daly TD, Kenny’s Bookshop

& Derek Nolan TD

We also thank our competition judge Dave Lordan

for his ongoing work on the competition.

THE WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED

@ the October Over The Edge: Open Reading

in Galway City Library,

Thursday October 29^th

The longlist can be viewed here.

Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition judged by Geraldine Mills & Gerard Reidy

August Over The Edge: Open Reading with Aoife Reilly, Matt Flesk & Jessica Traynor

January Over The Edge: Open Reading with Paula Cunningham, Michelle Coyne, & Liz Quirke

February Over The Edge: Open Reading with Christine Valters Paintner, Erin Fornoff & Julian Gough

2015 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop

Cúirt International Festival of Literature PROGRAMME LAUNCH

March Over The Edge Writers' Gathering with Kathy D’Arcy, Angela Carr, Dave Lordan, Pearl O’Kennedy, & Lorna Shaughnessy

Special Over The Edge: Open Reading At Gort Library For ‘I Will Arise And Go Now’ Festival

March Over The Edge: Open Reading with Seán Lysaght, Gráinne McHale, & Tim Dwyer

Spring Beginners & Intermediate Creative Writing Classes at Galway Technical Institute BOOK YOUR PLACE NOW

Over The Edge in association with the Cúirt Festival of International Literature presents the tenth annual New Writing Showcase.

Spring Daytime Creative Writing with Susan Millar DuMars at Galway Arts Centre

SPRING POETRY WORKSHOPS AT GALWAY ARTS CENTRE

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

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

2015 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year LONGLIST ANNOUNCED

February Over The Edge: Open Reading with Christine Valters Paintner, Erin Fornoff & Julian Gough

Culture Night Open-Mic for Fiction Writers & Poets THERE WILL BE PRIZES!

September Over The Edge: Open Reading with Katherine Noone, Andrea Lutz, & Rafiq Kathwari

2015 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year SHORTLIST!