Dervla Murphy’s first book, Full Tilt: From Ireland to India with a Bicycle, was published in 1965. Over twenty other titles have followed, including an account of travels in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, a volume against nuclear power, a consideration of race relations in England during the 1980s and a highly-acclaimed autobiography, Wheels Within Wheels. Dervla has won worldwide praise for her writing and many awards, including the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize.
All of these books were published by John Murray, but following their absorbtion by a conglomerate Dervla sought a publisher as independent-minded as herself and settled on Eland, the travel publisher. Now in her mid-seventies, she continues to travel around the world, happily setting off to trek in remote mountains, and remains passionate about politics, conservation, bicycling and beer.
Dervla Murphy was born in 1931 in Co. Waterford, where she still lives when not travelling. Her daughter, Rachel, and three young granddaughters live in Italy and join Dervla on her travels when possible.
Web Site: www.dervlamurphy.com
Details of this year’s festival programme can be found elsewhere on this website.
Manchán Magan is a writer and documentary-maker. He wrote the Magan’s World travel column for Saturday’s Irish Times Magazine for 6 years and currently hosts the Right Hook travel slot. His travel documentaries focusing on issues of world culture for TG4, RTE & Travel Channel were shown in 25 territories around the world. No Béarla, his documentary series about travelling around Ireland speaking only Irish sparked international debate. He has written numerous travel books in English and Irish, including, include ‘Angels & Rabies: a journey through the Americas’ (Brandon, 2006), ‘Manchán’s Travels: a journey through India’ (Brandon, 2007) and ‘Truck Fever: a journey through Africa’ (Brandon, 2008). His Irish books include Baba-ji agus TnaG (Coiscéim 2006) and Manchán ar Seachrán (Coiscéim 1998). He has written for the Guardian, LA Times and Washington Post.
Fergal Keane was born in London and educated in Ireland. He is one of the BBC’s most distinguished correspondents and an award-winning broadcaster and author. He has reported on the major conflicts and also forgotten wars of the modern age. He has been awarded a BAFTA, been named reporter of the year on television and radio, winning honours from the Royal Television Society and the Sony Radio Awards. Keane has won the George Orwell prize for literature, the James Cameron Prize and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the US Overseas Press Association. He was recently awarded the Ireland Fund of America Literary Prize. Keane was also awarded an OBE for his services to journalism. He is the author of a number of bestselling books including ‘Letter to Daniel’ and his memoir ‘All of These People’ and the critically acclaimed ‘Road of Bones – the Siege of Kohima’ in 2010. He is due to publish a new book ‘Wounds – a memoir of Love and War’ in the Autumn. He lives in London with his wife and two children.”
Kate Adie, author and broadcaster, became a familiar figure to people through her work as Chief News Correspondent, BBC News (British Broadcasting Corporation), and is considered to be among the very finest reporters, as well as one of the first British women, sending despatches from danger zones around the world. She is also familiar as the presenter of Radio Four’s From Our Own Correspondent and a guest on many other radio and television programmes. She has been named ‘Reporter of the Year’ twice by the Royal Television Society; the first occasion was for her coverage of the SAS end to the Iranian Embassy siege in 1973. She also won the Monte Carlo International Golden Nymph Award in 1981 and 1990, and was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1993.
Dermot Somers (born 1947) is a writer, broadcaster and mountaineer. Lives in Drogheda, Co Louth.
Born in Sligo, Mary Branley is the author to two collections of poetry.
Annie G. Rogers is a writer and Professor of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychology at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in Ireland, and a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University, she is the author of A Shining Affliction (Penguin Viking, 1995), Charlie’s Chasing the Sheep (Lismore Books, 2003), and The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma (Random House, 2006). She has published poetry and short fiction, and currently is writing a novel. She lives a bi-located life in Lismore and in Amherst, in the US.
With the publication of Stalin’s Nose, Rory MacLean crashed through the norms of the genre to create a literary species almost his own. To mark the republication of his early books (with introductions from Colin Thubron, William Dalrymple and Jan Morris), Rory will retrace sixteen passionate years of journeying, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the rise of the Taliban, and talk about how – like Chatwin and Kapuscinski before him – he audaciously crosses the travel book with some of the wilder forms of the novel.
Alan Murphy is the Dublin-born writer and illustrator of two previous collections of poetry for young readers, the most recent of which, Psychosilly, was on an Irish Times book list. Having previously plied his trade as a painter in Dublin, he currently lives in Lismore, where he writes, continues to make art, photographs cows, and occasionally reviews books. He recently received a bursary to further his literary and artistic endeavours at the Tyrone Guthrie centre from Waterford county council. Previous festival appearances include Electric Picnic, Poetry Now, the West Cork Literary Festival, and, of course, Immrama. His forthcoming collection, Prometheus Unplugged, is a breathless extravaganza which manages to combine rock music and Greek mythology.
Áine Uí Fhoghlú comes from An Rinn, Co. Waterford. Has published two collections of poetry Aistear Aonair (1999) and An Liú sa Chuan (2007) both by Coiscéim publishing as well as editing Dánta Mílaoise (2000), a collection of poems by secondary school students in County Waterford. Her poems have been featured in various publications and anthologies, often in translation. Áine is on the Writers in Schools panel and has done many workshops at primary and secondary school level as well as with adult groups. Was Writer in residence with County Kilkenny VEC in 2006.