The February Over the Edge Open Reading will take place next week, featuring the work of writers with life experiences from France, to New Zealand to Russia.
The Open Reading will take place online next Thursday, February 24 at the usual time of 6:30-8:00pm, with featured readers Vincent Flannery, Claire Loader, Sharon Black & Polina Cosgrave.
Polina Cosgrave is a Russian-born writer, now based in Ireland. Born in Volgograd, one of the most famed cities of WW2 under its old name of Stalingrad, she earned a degree in Linguistics as a teacher of English and French in Volgograd State Pedagogical University.
Polina’s diploma thesis The Linguistic Phenomenon Of Fear In Stephen King’s Novels won the first prize at the University’s 63rd conference.
Her work in Russian was featured on Echo of Moscow radio station, and her debut poetry collection My Name Iswas published by Dedalus Press.
Polina is a recipient of Arts Council Ireland Literature Bursary Award for 2021, and her work has appeared in many publications here, including Local Wonders and Writing Home: New Irish Poets.
Sharon Black was born in Glasgow, but lives in a remote valley of the Cévennes mountains of France.
Her poetry is published widely and she has won many prizes for her work including the Guernsey International Poetry Competition 2019 and The London Magazine Poetry Prizes 2019 and 2018.
Her collections published to date are To Know Bedrock and The Art of Egg, with her third and fourth expected this year.
Claire Loader is a New Zealand born writer and photographer now living in Galway, whose work has been published in various magazines, including Poetry Bus, Splonk, Crannóg and Skylight47.
She won the Women Speak Poetry Competition in 2019 and her story Return was shortlisted for the Allingham Flash Fiction Prize in the same year.
She is a Forward and Pushcart Prize nominee and this year sees her first collection Pushed Toward the Blue Hour published by Nine Pens Press.
Vincent Flannery is a creative writing student at NUI Galway. His writing allows him to act as a conductor, directing his emotional states and abstract mental imagery into the physical world of writing.
Through writing, Vincent translates an internal world into a grounded reality. His poetry has been published in ROPES.
There will, as always at Over The Edge: Open Readings, be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished, with new readers always welcome.
Anyone interested in taking part in the open-mic should text Kevin Higgins on 087-6431748 or register their interest by messaging the Over The Edge Facebook page the evening of the event.
Join The Over The Edge Zoom Meeting at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7389013549, meeting ID: 738 901 3549.
