GALWAY: February Over The Edge Open Reading

Thursday, February 28th, 2013, 6.30pm-8pm, FREE

Galway City Library

The Featured Readers are Mia Gallagher, Dawn Wisniewski and Ruth Quinlan. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are especially welcome. The evening will also see the announcement of details of this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, which will then be made available on our website http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.com

Ruth Quinlan is from Tralee, County Kerry. She worked in IT before taking a break in 2011 to try and scratch the writing itch and graduated from the MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2012. She was shortlisted for the 2012 Cúirt New Writing fiction prize and longlisted for last year's Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition. Her work has been published by Emerge Literary Journal, Thresholds, SIN, Scissors and Spackle and she is longlisted for the current Irish Independent Hennessy New Irish Writing awards. She recently contributed towards two group anthologies, Abandoned Darlings (fiction) and Wayword Tuesdays (poetry). You can find her blogging occasionally at ruthquinlan.wordpress.com. 

Despite a lengthy career in the logical world of information technology, Dawn Wisniewski has carved a tunnel into the creative side of her brain, allowing her to formulate everything from poetry to fantasy worlds, and even a little artistry on the side.  With the help of Kevin Higgins’ poetry workshops, she has gained not only confidence in her poetic ventures but better skills to craft her prose.  Also aided by Susan Millar-Dumars’ classes, Dawn has developed a portfolio of short stories and enhancements to the series of fantasy novels she has written.  With the first of the series of novels finally ready for submission, Dawn is actively seeking an agent or publisher.

Mia Gallagher is a writer and performer based in Dublin. She has written many short stories and is working on a third novel. Her short fiction won the START Short Fiction award (2005) and was shortlisted for the Fish, Hennessy and William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen Awards. Her debut novel HellFire (Penguin Ireland, 2006) was critically acclaimed and received the Irish Tatler Literature Award. An extract from her second novel Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland appeared last year in Literary Imagination (Oxford University Press).  In September 2012, Carpet Theatre produced The Trick and Burning Love, two of her adaptations of plays from the classic if schlocky Grand Guignol Theatre of Horror! In 2012 she appeared as the female lead in TG4 docudrama The Enigma of Frank Ryan, which has shown at film festivals internationally. Mia was writer-in-residence at IADT/dlr Arts Office in 2009-2010.

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 EVENING WILL ALSO SEE THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF DETAILS OF THIS YEAR’S OVER THE EDGE NEW WRITER OF THE YEAR COMPETITION. 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