Get a taste of some of the best emerging writers in poetry and fiction in Galway at the Cúirt/Over the Edge New Writing showcase this month.
The annual New Writing Showcase returns for 2021 via Zoom on Thursday, April 22 at 1pm with the voices of six fantastic emerging writers for people who want to get a fix of Galway’s arts scene at home.
Presenting emerging voices in poetry and fiction, this dynamic reading event brings together writers involved in the Over the Edge Literary Series in Galway, the winners of the annual Cúirt New Writing Prize and Cúirt’s PENxCommon Currency Writer in Residence.
Bern Butler is a Galway City native, born and raised in Shantalla, who turns her hand to both poetry and prose, for which she has short and long-listed in the Fish, Over the Edge and Listowel writing competitions and published in Force 10, The Grey Castle, ROPES and Skylight 47.
She has a long history of helping people in prison find their voices through writing. She was the Co-ordinator of the Writers in Prisons Scheme for ten years, where she wrote, directed and produced prison dramatic productions, liaised with the Cuirt Festival of Literature, and the Arts Council of Ireland to bring writers into prisons.
Riona Mac Eoin is a professional veterinarian and avid wanderer from Galway City, who has only recently taken up the pen.
She is very interested in psychology, specifically the influence our childhood years have on the development of our adult selves, and volunteers with Foróige helping young people navigate their adolescent years.
Ríona took a break from work last year and spent 6 months in New York which is where she discovered her love of writing fiction.
Paul McCarrick’s poetry has been published in The Blue Nib, Crannóg, Skylight 47, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere. He was selected by Martina Evans to take part in the 2019 Poetry Ireland Introductions Series.
The Westmeath native is currently completing his first collection of poetry for publication from his home in Athlone.
Suad Aldarra is a Syrian storyteller, data scientist, and software engineer based in Dublin. She is the Common Currency Writer in Residence for the festival and is currently writing a book about home and identity after being long-listed for the Penguin Random House WriteNow 2020 programme.
Though she lives in Dublin now, it was in Galway where she first discovered her passion for writing at Galway Technical Institute’s Creative Writing classes.
Bernadette Lynch is the winner of the 2021 Cúirt New Writing Prize for poetry, though she writes both poetry and prose, and is currently experimenting with hybridising the two.
In normal times she lives between England and Ireland, having connections with both, and her work reflects this duality.
Her poetry won the International Section of the Hanna Greally Awards at the SiarScéal Poetry Festival in County Roscommon in 2012, 2016 and 2020, and was commended in the UK Poetry Society’s Stanza Competition in 2016.
David Morgan O’Connor, originally from a small Canadian village on Lake Huron, is the winner of the 2021 Cúirt New Writing Prize for fiction
After many nomadic years, he’s based in Dublin, where stories and poems progress daily. His writing has appeared in more than 50 print or online publications. He reviews, interviews and blogs monthly.
Bookings will for the New Writing Showcase be taken via Eventbrite, with a link to the Zoom event being emailed to participants near to the day of the event. Please email info@cuirt.ie if you have not received a link within 48 hours of the event date.
