The October Over the Edge open reading and open mic night will take place over Zoom next week so people can get their arts fix in lockdown, with a special focus on non-fiction.
The Open Reading will take place next Thursday, October 29 at the usual Over The Edge time of 6:30-8:00pm.
This is Over The Edge’s annual non-fiction special, at which all of the Featured Readers are writers of non-fiction; however poets and fiction writers are still very welcome at the open-mic.
The Featured Readers are Niamh Flynn, Ruairí McKiernan, & Tariq Ali. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished.
Niamh Flynn is a Galway native and a sports psychologist at the Galway Clinic. Over the years she she has written for The Irish Examiner, Mature Living Magazine, Gaelic World, High Ball and many more.
Her book End Migraine Fast was taken up earlier this year by a French Publisher and is due to be published in France in 2021.
She is currently in talks with agents regarding the publication of her most recent work ‘She Kept Walking’, a true story of the life of a young man, Seánie Ó Lionsaigh, growing up in abject poverty in the West of Ireland in the 1970s.
Ruairí McKiernan is originally from Cootehill in County Cavan; he now lives in Lahinch. He recently published his debut book Hitching for Hope – a Journey into the Heart and Soul of Ireland in the US, where it went straight to number 1 in the Nielsen paperback non-fiction bestseller charts.
Described as a “powerful manifesto for hope and healing in troubled times”, Hitching for Hope is part personal pilgrimage, part political quest, reflecting a hitchhiking listening tour McKiernan undertook around Ireland during the last recession while contemplating the prospect of emigration.
The book is also a memoir reflecting on his 20 years’ work as a campaigner and social innovator, which includes 7 years as one of President Higgins’ appointees to the Council of State.
Tariq Ali was born in 1943 in what is now Pakistan while it was still under British rule and has lived in London since his university days.
Tariq has been writing for the Guardian since the 70s and is a long-standing editor of the New Left Review and a political commentator published on every continent.
He has published dozens of books, including The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American Power, and The Obama Syndrome.
He has also published a number of novels, including Redemption, a bawdy satire on late 20th century Trotskyist groups set in Paris, New York, Mexico City and London, and Fear of Mirrors, set in post-Stalinist eastern Germany.
To take part in this month’s Over the Edge reading, join the Zoom meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7389013549 (Meeting ID: 738 901 3549) next Thursday.
Anyone interested in taking part in the open-mic should text Kevin Higgins on 087-6431748 or email over-the-edge-openreadings@
