GALWAY: August Over The Edge Open Reading

Thursday, August 25th, 2011, 6.30pm-8pm

Galway City Library,
St. Augustine Street,
Galway

The Featured Readers are Laurie Leech, Evelyn Parsons and Clare Pollard. The reading is sponsored by Poetry Ireland. The evening will also see the announcement of the shortlist in this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition.

Laurie Leech is a Galway-based poet. He is MC of the Testify! nights in Róisín Dubh, showcasing poets, musicians and anything else in between. Formerly MC of Poetry Smackdown, which was featured on RTE’s Arena. He took 2nd place in the 2011 Cúirt Poetry Grand Slam and 1st place in the 2011 Drogheda Fringe Poetry Slam. He puts his words to music sometimes and shared a bill with Buck 65, also during Cúirt 2011.

Evelyn Parsons says that she “stumbled down a creative writing shaped rabbit hole in 2010, landing heart first in a fiction wonderland of classes with Kevin Higgins and Susan Millar DuMars.” She was highly commended in the 2010 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition and short-listed for the 2011 Fish One Page Prize. Evelyn is also an avid reader and a member of the Ballinasloe Booksuckers Club.

Clare Pollard has published four collections of poetry with Bloodaxe Books, the most recent of which, Changeling, was published in June of this year. Her play The Weather (Faber, 2004) premiered at the Royal Court Theatre and has been performed at the Munchner Kammerspiele in Munich. Clare was Assistant Director of the Clerkenwell Literary Festival from 2002-5. She has scripted and presented two documentaries for televison, and her documentary for radio, My Male Muse, was a Radio 4 Pick of the year. Her short stories have been published in The Idler and the anthology Comma (Comma Press, 2002).  She recently co-edited the Bloodaxe anthology Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st Century.  Clare is currently teaching for The City Lit, The Poetry School and the Arvon Foundation. This is Clare’s first time reading in Ireland.

There will be an open-mic when the Featured Readers have finished. This is open to anyone who has a poem or story to share. New readers are always especially welcome. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. For further details phone 087-6431748 or see our website http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.com/

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of Galway City Council and The Arts Council