Opportunity for emerging writers: Cúirt Festival Over The Edge Showcase reading

Kevin Higgins

The 2010 Cúirt Festival Over The Edge showcase reading takes place


at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway


on Thursday, April 22nd, 3pm.


The five featured authors this year are


Cristina Galvin, Tom Lavelle,


Geraldine Mitchell, Marcella Morgan


& Áine Tierney

The Over the Edge reading series began in January 2003. Each month, the Over the Edge: Open Reading puts the spotlight on emerging poets and fiction writers - sessions end with an open-mic, where anyone can get in on the act. Co-organisers Kevin Higgins and Susan Millar DuMars (host) are grateful for the continued support of GalwayCity Library, GalwayCity Council, The Arts Council, Poetry Ireland, The Cúirt Festival and, especially, the many talented writers who have taken part in the series during the past seven years.

Cristina Galvin has an MA in Writing from NUIG and teaches yoga in Galway and surrounding areas. She loves books written from a child’s point of view and playing with this perspective in her own fiction and non-fiction. She was long-listed in the 2008 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition. Cristina also writes poetry and her work features in the anthologies Ink For Air and Three Times Daily.
Tom Lavelle lives in Galway and works for a manufacturing company. He is a participant in the Advance Poetry Workshop at Galway Arts Centre and as part of that group read his work at last year’s Clifden Arts Week. His poems have appeared in Revival, Boyne Berries, The Stony Thursday Book, Crannóg, West 47 online, The Cuirt Annual, ROPES & The Shop. Tom was shortlisted for the Cúirt Over The Edge showcase reading in both 2008 and 2009 and in the Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition. He is currently working on an M Phil in Writing at the University of Glamorgan.

Geraldine Mitchell was born in Dublin and lives near Louisburgh, Co. Mayo. In between she has lived in France, Algeria, Spain and England where she taught English and worked as a freelance journalist. Her previous publications include two novels for young people and a biography. Her poems have been widely published in Irish journals and in the Oxfam Calendar 2009. She won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2008. In their comments the judges, Moya Cannon and Theo Dorgan, said that Geraldine’s poems display: “a clear-eyed sensibility that considers, but does not judge human fragility”.

Marcella Morgan isoriginally from Maynooth, but has been living in Galway for the past year and a half. She spends her days fixin’ troushers in an alterations shop in town, and her nights writing poems about her angry womb. She has attended several writing workshops with Susan Millar DuMars where she learnt how to make a bomb using bread soda, an empty beer can and a thong. Susan also taught her how to spell trousers. Marcella was short-listed for 2009 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year, is a finalist in this year’s Cúirt Festival Poetry Grand Slam and has also been a featured reader at North Beach Poetry Nights.

Áine Tierney is from Rosmore, Co. Tipperary. She has worked as a secondary school English teacher, but is presently researching for a PhD in Philosophy on the role of Imagination in Education at University College Cork. She has an MA in Writing from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her writing has appeared in various magazines and newspapers. She had a short story published in the Silverfish anthology, which was funded by South Tipperary County Council’s Per Cent for Art Scheme.

If you, or a writers group you belong to, would be interested in taking part in the Over The Edge Cúirt showcase in the future contact Over The Edge c/o Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, Galway or send a sample of six of your poems or two thousand words of your fiction to us at Over The Edge, 3 Carbry Road, Newcastle, Galway and we will consider you for a Featured Reading at one of the Over The Edge: Open Readings which will make you eligible for the shortlist for the subsequent Cúirt Festival Over The Edge showcase.

http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.com