GALWAY: May Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering

Friday, May 17th, 2013, 6.30pm, FREE

Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop,

Middle Street,

Galway

Readings by Fiona Smith and Kevin Doyle

plus the launch of Jean Folan’s debut poetry collection Between Time

plus The Galway Launches of The Light Knows Tricks by Jo Hemmant

& The First Book Of Frags by Dave Lordan

Fiona Smith is a freelance journalist and translator. She has published a wide range of journalistic work in both Irish and international publications. She currently writes on Irish topics for the German Press Agency dpa and translates from Scandinavian languages into English. She has published poetry in Southword and in the Hennessy New Irish Writing page in the Irish Independent. She won the poetry section of the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition in 2012 with the poem 'At Letterfrack'. She is currently working on a first collection.

Kevin Doyle is from Cork.  His short stories have been published in Cork Literary Review, Stinging Fly, Southwords, Burning Bush, Cúirt Journal, Duality, Liblit and Sunday Tribune.  His work has also been included in anthologies such as Irish Writers Against War (Dublin, 2003), Pulse Fiction (London, 1998) and Snapshots (London, 1999) as well as Cork millennium collection, An Gob Saor.  He has been shortlisted for many prizes (including Over The Edge, 2010) and has won top placings in the Ian St James Short Story Award, Kilkenny Prize, Tipperary Short Story Weekend Prize and the Highlands and Islands Short Story Award.  His work was described by the late Patrick Galvin as ‘terse and original’.  He blogs regularly at on Irish and radical politics from an anarchist perspective (http://kfdoyle.wordpress.com).

Jean Folan was born in Galway in 1951. She lives in Inishcrone, Co Sligo and is enrolled on the MA in Writing in NUI Galway. Between Time is her first collection of poems and is published by Lapwing. Jean Folan was shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize 2007, and the Over the Edge Showcase 2008, and was a featured reader at Over the Edge 2007. She was the winner of the Impromptu Haiku, Culture Night 2010, Ballina Arts Centre, Co. Mayo and runner-up at Culture Night 2012, Kenny’s Bookshop, Galway.

Jo Hemmant was born in Manchester in 1967, and this was to be the first of many places she has lived, including Sicily, Holland and Hong Kong. She has always worked with words—after brief stints teaching English as a foreign language and writing PR puffs, she moved into journalism and editing. This experience in publishing prompted her to set up Pindrop, a boutique poetry press, in 2010, which has published twelve titles to date. She now lives in the Kent countryside with her husband and two sons and is involved in local poetry, acting as Secretary of The Kent and Sussex Poetry Society and running creative writing workshops. Her poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies, such as Magma, Iota, Dream Catcher, Jericho (Cinnamon Press, 2012) and nothing left to burn (Ragged Raven Press, 2011) and she has won prizes in several competitions, including first prize in The New Writer Poetry and Prose Competition 2011(collection category), second prize in the Torriano Poetry Competition in 2011 and runner-up in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2012. Her poetry collection, The Light Knows Tricks, is just published by Doire Press.

Dave Lordan is the first writer to win Ireland’s three national prizes for young poets. He is the current holder of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award and previous winner of both the Patrick Kavanagh and Strong Awards for poetry. He has won wide acclaim for his writing and is a renowned performer of his own work, with the Irish Times calling him ‘as brilliant on the page as he is in performance’. He has read his work by invitation at festivals and venues across Europe and North America. His collections are The Boy in The Ring (2007) & Invitation to a Sacrifice (2010), both published by Salmon Poetry. His poems are regularly broadcast on Irish national radio and he reviews for the flagship Arts show Arena, as well as many publications including Ireland’s leading literary magazine, The Stinging Fly, of which he was a guest editor for summer 2012. He teaches contemporary critical theory and poetic practice on the MA in poetry studies in Dublin City University and he teaches creative writing at primary, secondary, third, and adult education levels. Dave’s debut collection of short stories First Books of Frags is just published by Wurm Press.