GALWAY: October Over The Edge Open Reading

Thursday, October 25th, 2012, 6.30-8pm, FREE

Galway City Library

The Featured Readers are Patrick Chapman, Aoibheann McCann and Cormac Culkeen. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome.

Cormac Culkeen is a writer of poetry, fiction and short stories from Dunmore, Co. Galway. He discovered the power of the written word in National School when he wrote a poem and his teacher stopped threatening him because of it. He has two dogs who obey nobody else when he's at home and a family who keep at him to better himself. Some years ago his work was published in The Burning Bush literary magazine. He lives and works in Galway and has recently been attending creative writing classes at Galway Technical Institute.

Aoibheann McCann is a native of County Donegal. She moved to Galway in 1992 where she attended NUI Galway. She published her first poem in 1995 in The Edge and went on to write the ‘Blow-In’s Guide to Galway’ column in Galway Xposed, followed by the ‘Let’s Talk About…’ column in The Galway Independent. She has been working on her first novel, ‘Hippocampus’, for the past eight years.

Patrick Chapman was born in 1968. He lives in Dublin. His poetry collections are Jazztown (Raven Arts Press, Dublin, 1991), The New Pornography (Salmon Poetry), Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights (Salmon Poetry, 2007), A Shopping Mall on Mars (BlazeVOX [Books], Buffalo, 2008) and The Darwin Vampires (Salmon Poetry, 2010). His collection of short stories is The Wow Signal (Bluechrome, UK, 2007). Also a scriptwriter, he adapted his own published story for Burning the Bed (2003). Directed by Denis McArdle, this award-winning film starred Gina McKee and Aidan Gillen. He has written episodes of the children’s animated television series Garth & Bev (Kavaleer, 2009); and a Doctor Who audio play, Fear of the Daleks (Big Finish, 2007).  His story ‘A Ghost’ won first prize in the Cinescape Genre Literary Competition. In 2010 his work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Patrick’s latest collection of poetry A Promiscuity of Spines: New & Selected Poems is just published by Salmon Poetry.

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 & The Arts Council. http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.com