GALWAY: July Over The Edge Writers' Gathering

Thursday, July 12th, 2012, 6.30pm-8pm, FREE

Galway City Library

Doire Press Showcase PLUS

visiting American writers Mark Conway & Maura Mulligan

The Over The Edge July Writers’ Gathering presents a special showcase reading by poets and fiction writers published by Galway county based Doire Press. Jacqueline Murrary Loring, Celeste Augé, Kevin O’Shea and John Walsh will read their work. The evening will also include readings by visiting American writers Mark Conway and Maura Mulligan. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Jacqueline Murrary Loring is a screenwriter, playright and poet. She is the retired exectutive director of the Cape Cod Writers’ Center and is the president of the Cape Cod Chapter of the National League of American Pen Women. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications, incuding The Boston Poet, Prime Time Magazine, Re:verse, Cape Cod Voice, Summer Home Review – volume I and II, and  From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and its Aftermath. She is the winner of the 2012 International Doire Press Poetry Chapbook Competition, and her chapbook, The History of Bearing Children, will be published by Doire Press in July.

Celeste Augé is an Irish-Canadian writer who has lived in Ireland since she was twelve. When she was in her twenties, she dropped out of art college; in her thirties she completed an MA in Writing; currently she teaches creative writing to adults and university undergraduates. Her fiction and poetry have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been short-listed for a Hennessy Literary Award and Salmon Poetry have published her first full-length poetry collection, The Essential Guide to Flight. The Arts Council of Ireland awarded her a Literature Bursary. Her short story ‘The Good Boat’ won the 2011 Cúirt New Writing Prize for fiction. Fireproof and Other Stories is just published by Doire Press.

Kevin O’Shea lives on the edge of Connemara, in Moycullen, still within earshot of the old Galway-Clifden railway. Having retreated from the world of technology to timidly confront the world of imagination he was short listed for Over The Edge New Writer of the Year in both 2009 and 2010. His poetry has been published in Irish Left Review, Ropes, Pen Tales, Behind the Masks, Mosaic, THE SHOp and Northern Liberties Review.  He was the winner in the poetry section of this year’s Cúirt New Writing Prize and as part of his prize Kevin read at the Cúirt Over The Edge Showcase reading. His highly anticipated debut collection of poetry, The Art of Non-Fishing , will be published by Doire Press in the Autumn.

John Walsh was born in Derry in 1950. After sixteen years teaching English in Germany, in 1989 he returned to live in Connemara.  His first poetry collection Johnny tell Them was published by Guildhall Press (Derry) in October 2006. In 2007 he received a Publication Award from Galway County Council to publish his second collection Love’s Enterprise Zone (Doire Press, Connemara). In 2010 Salmon Poetry published his latest collection Chopping Wood with T.S. Eliot. His poems have been published in Ireland, the UK and Austria and the USA. He has read and performed his poems at events in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Sweden and the USA. He received a Publication Award from Galway County Council for his debut short story collection Border Lines, which was published by Doire Press in April 2012 and has been very favourably received.

Mark Conway’s previous books are Dreaming Man, Face Down which won the 2009 American Poetry Journal Book Prize and Any Holy City, short-listed for the 2007 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. Individual poems have appeared in such leading international journals as The Paris Review, Slate, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review On-line, Agni, Harvard Review and Bomb.  He is currently working on a manuscript called Fuse with poems forthcoming in The American Poetry Review and The Iowa Review.

Maura Mulligan’s memoir, Call of the Lark is just published by Greenpoint Press New York.  It is the story of a woman who found the courage to change her life -- several times. As a young girl in Ireland, Maura Mulligan worked as a servant in "a grand house." At seventeen, she sailed to America and became a telephone operator. Answering a higher call, she entered a Franciscan convent and became a nun. Influenced by the changes following Vatican II, she made the decision to return to the world.  Call of the Lark offers a vivid portrait of the author's childhood in rural Ireland of the forties and fifties. Behind the convent door, the reader shares her nun's life, and stands with her when she closes it behind her. http://greenpointpress.org/gb_book_lark.html

After the reading we will be retiring for refreshments to the House Hotel.