GALWAY: Over The Edge March Writers’ Gathering

Friday, March 11th, 2011, 8pm
at The Café @ The Museum
Spanish Arch
Galway

The Over The Edge March Writers’ Gathering presents readings by poets and fiction writers from Ireland, The Netherlands and the United States. Nick Hayes, Alex Hijmans, Lorna Shaughnessy, Anna Snyder, John W. Sexton and Alan Jude Moore will read.

Nick Hayes is a frequent guest on radio and television in the United States; he also publishes widely in newspapers, magazines, and journals. He has been the recepient of awards from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Program. He won an Emmy in 1991 for his work on the documentary "Television and Democracy in Russia." Nick is a professor of history and holds the university chair in critical thinking at Saint John’s University in Minnesota. His memoir And One Fine Morning Memoires of My Father (Nodin Press) was published in 2010.

Alex Hijmans was born in The Netherlands. He moved to Galway in 1995, learned Irish, worked as a journalist and ran a coffeehouse, Café Bananaphoblacht. In 2007 he moved to Brazil, where he works as an international correspondent. Aiséirí is his first novel. A book of his non-fiction, ‘Favela’, was published, also by Cois Life, in 2009. Alex’ short stories have appeared in Comhar, Crannóg Magazine and Irish Pages. His website is www.alexhijmans.com

Lorna Shaughnessy was born in Belfast and lives in County Galway. She lectures in the Department of Spanish, NUI Galway. She has published two translations of contemporary Mexican poetry, Mother Tongue: Selected Poems by Pura López Colomé and If We Have Lost our Oldest Tales by María Baranda, both with Arlen House (2006). Her first collection of poetry, Torching the Brown River, was published by Salmon in 2008. Her second collection, Witness Trees, will be published later this year also by Salmon.

Anna Snyder is a student in the Masters of Writing program at NUI Galway, and though she sees herself as primarily a prose-writer, she has undergone a poetic renaissance while living in Galway.  Her greatest loves are writing, travelling, and playing the guitar badly.  Once her Masters is completed, she hopes to somehow find a job in Dublin so she can stay in Ireland for as long as she wants.

John W. Sexton was born in 1958 is the author of three poetry collections: The Prince’s Brief Career (Cairn Mountain Press, 1995), Shadows Bloom / Scáthanna Faoi Bhláth, a book of haiku with translations into Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock, and Vortex (Doghouse, 2005). Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston he has recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. His fourth collection, Petit Mal, was published recently by Revival Press.

Alan Jude Moore is the author of three collections of poetry, Black State Cars (Salmon Poetry, 2004), Lost Republics (Salmon Poetry, 2008) and Strasbourg (Salmon Poetry, 2010). He is widely published, in Ireland and abroad, and his fiction has been twice short-listed for the Hennessy Literary Award for New Irish Writing. Translations of his work have been published in Italy, Russia and Turkey. He lives in Dublin.

There is no entrance fee.  The Café @ The Museum has a wine licence. All welcome. For further information contact 087-6431748.