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This special episode of the podcast, celebrating Pride Month 2025 aired on Saturday 28th June 2025. It is produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to the guest stars…

Sue Finch

Sue Finch is the author of Magnifying Glass and Welcome to the Museum of a Life. She loves the coast, peculiar things, and the scent of ice-cream freezers. Her poems have been widely published in magazines and journals and have featured on iamb, Eat the Storms and A Thousand Shades of Green.

Follow Sue on her website

Charles K. Carter

Charles K. Carter is a queer poet who lives in Oregon. They are the author of The God of Loneliness (Rebel Satori Press), If the World Were a Quilt (Kelsay Books), and Read My Lips (David Robert Books) as well as several chapbooks. Carter can be found on

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Elaine Westnott-O’Brien

Elaine Westnott-O’Brien is a writer and teacher based in Tramore, where she lives with her wife and two children. She has been widely published in journals from The Storms to The Waxed Lemon, by way of The Wexford Bohemian and Impossible Archetype. You can find out more about her on Instagram @elainewob_words. 

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MANNY

I’m MANNY (he/him). I am a performer and writer from London, I graduated from the University of Roehampton and my degree was in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. I like to work on projects, collaborate with people and more. I love to explore all different topics and themes in my work. I’m a spoken word artist who enjoys connecting spoken word, acting, music and movements/dance together.  I have three writing projects out online on my website at the moment: Beauty Within The Cracks, ART IS MY SUPERPOWER and BURNIN’ FLAME. My fourth writing project: Steppin’ Out Stronger will be out on the 25th of July and I’m doing my first ever launch on the 27th of July at The LGBTQ+ Community Centre for the project.  You can find some collaborations on my website and more. I have a few singles on all streaming platforms.  I also host an open mic event at the LGBTQ+ Community Centre called Queer Open Mic (final Saturday of every month) from 17:30 – 19:30. 

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Find out more about MANNY at his website

Marie Marchand

A Pushcart Prize nominee, Marie Marchand is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Ellensburg, WA. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Crannóg Magazine, Catamaran Literary Reader, and California Quarterly. She is the author of Gifts to the Attentive and the forthcoming Mostly Sweet, Lovely, Human Things. Marie is a graduate of Naropa University and The Iliff School of Theology where she studied psychology, religion, and peacemaking. She lives on the sunny side of Washington with her two rescued min pins, Benny and Joon. 

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Derek Coyle

Derek Coyle’s Reading John Ashbery in Costa Coffee Carlow (2019) was shortlisted for the Shine Strong 2020 award for best first collection. Sipping Martinis under Mount Leinster (2024) is published in a dual language edition in Tranas, Sweden. His poems have appeared in The Irish Times, Irish Pages, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Texas Literary Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Orbis, Skylight 47, Assaracus, The High Window and The Stony Thursday Book. He reviews books regularly, and he has written literary essays on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, John Montague, James Schuyler and Paula Meehan. He lectures in Carlow College/St Patrick’s, Ireland.

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Mark Ward

Mark Ward is the author of the collection Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2023) as well as five chapbooks, the most recent of which are the interactive sonnet Faultlines (voidspace, 2024) and I Was a Teenage Exorcist (Chaps Poetry, 2024). A three-time Arts Council of Ireland awardee, his work has been featured widely at home and abroad, including in the landmark anthology Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry (ed. Paul Maddern, Lifeboat Press), and in March 2025, his poem ‘Romantic Landscape’ was displayed in Cork as part of their Poetry in the Park series. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its ninth year. Forthcoming books include Masters, an ekphrastic chapbook responding to dead queer male painters’ work, from The Emma Press in October 2025 and a second full-length collection, Real Estate, which will be published by Salmon Poetry in May 2026.

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Emma Clowsley

Emma Clowsley is a bold, inclusive, writer and performance poet who blends unflinching honesty with raw humour to craft powerful, relatable stories. Emma’s collab event, Hot Flush we’ve sold out in Brighton, Stroud, Bristol, and is on route to London).

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Michael McKimm

Originally from the north coast of Ireland, Michael McKimm has lived for many years in London, UK. His latest publications are Because we could not dance at the wedding (Worple Press, 2023), a book of queer love poems, and Or Land the Sea (2024), a portrait of the geology of the British coastline in poems and photographs, co-created with artist Julie Cuthbert. Michael’s poems appear in anthologies including Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry (Lifeboat, 2021)and Windfall: Irish Nature Poetry to Inspire and Connect (Hachette, 2023). He collects swimming pool poems on his website.

Follow Michael on his website

Rachel handley

Rachel Handley is a poet, science fiction author, and academic based in Dublin, Ireland. Their writing has been published by Arlen House, The Liminial Review, Sonder Magazine, and Poetry Ireland, among others. Their debut short story collection, Possible Worlds and Other Stories, was published in 2022. In 2023 their short story, The Sound, was longlisted for the BSFA Awards. In 2022 their poem, Dear Daughter, was shortlisted for the Dublin South Libraries Poetry Prize.

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David Hanlon

David Hanlon is a poet based in Cardiff, Wales. His work appears in numerous magazines and journals, including Rust & Moth, Barren Magazine, and trampset. His latest collection, Dawn’s Incision, was published by Icefloe Press.

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Simon Maddrell

Simon Maddrell (he/they) is a queer Manx writer, editor and performer living in Brighton & Hove. Simon’s debut chapbook, Throatbone, was published by UnCollected Press, MA in 2020. Queerfella, jointly-won The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition 2020. His 2023 pamphlets are Isle of Sin from Polari Press and The Whole Island from Valley Press, followed by a finger in derek jarman’s mouth, published by Polari Press, Feb. 2024. He has also had two three-poet anthologies published. His debut poetry collection will be published by Out-Spoken Press in February 2026.

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Host / Producer Damien B Donnelly

Damien B Donnelly is a 49-year-old Irish, adopted, queer writer & podcast producer who spent 23 years in Paris, Amsterdam, and London working in the fashion industry, returning to Dublin at the end of 2019. He’s the host / producer of Eat the Storms and the EIC of The Storms, the printed journal of poetry, prose & visual art. His debut pamphlet, Eat the Storms, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and featured on the Poetry Book Society Winter List 2020/21, followed by a Pushcart Prize nominated Stickleback (micro collection) and In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational pamphlet co-written with Eilín de Paor. His first full collection Enough! was also published by Hedgehog in August 2022. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals, online and in print. His 2^nd full collection, Back from Away, was published in May 2024 with Turas Press.

The Storms journal is available here

Follow Damien is on X and instagram and Bluesky: @eatthestorms,com

You can purchase his pamphlets and collections at his website

Backing music for Eat the Storms is from Purple Planet Royalty Free Music

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