Over The Edge in association with Poetry Ireland presents the September Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library, St. Augustine Street, Galway on Thursday, September 25th, 6.30-8pm. The Featured Readers are Colette Bryce, Orla Higgins & Des Kavanagh.

Colette Bryce has published two poetry collections. Her first collection, The Heel of Bernadette (2000), won the Aldeburgh Prize for best first collection and the inaugural Eithne Strong award in Ireland. She was also awarded first prize in the 2003 National Poetry Competition. Her most recent work, a pamphlet, The Observations of Aleksandr Svetlov was published by Donut in 2007. Her third collection, Self-Portrait in the Dark, is forthcoming in September 2008. Bryce was born in Derry in 1970, and has lived in England, Spain and Scotland.

Orla Higgins lives in Galway, loves to travel and wants to be a writer when she grows up. She works as a Business & Communications Consultant, primarily with arts and non-profit organisations. She also lectures part-time at NUIG with both the Department of Marketing and the Huston School of Film. Her first love is fiction but she has recently collaborated on writing a play titled For Pete's Sake. She has been a serial attender of Susan DuMars’s creative writing classes and is now a student on the MA in Writing at NUIG.

Des Kavanagh hails originally from the Inishowen peninsula in Donegal. He has been writing for four years and is a regular participant in Kevin Higgins’s advanced Poetry Class at Galway Arts Centre. He also takes an active interest in folklore and local history and has chaired the McGlinchey Summer School in Inishowen for most of the past ten years. He recently co-edited the Irish language version of his father’s book, The Last of the Name. He has read his poetry at Westside Library and Clifden Arts Week.