Jim O’Malley, an environmentalist and long-distance walker, is a native of the Youghal area though domiciled in Kerry since 1980. Jim taught English and Irish in Killorglin, 1980-2007. Since his retirement in 2007 he has fulfilled a longstanding ambition in following the Blackwater from source to sea in 2010.
A seven-day journey, hardly an epic walk, but a memorable experience that has been recorded in his recent book – Walking the Munster Blackwater, Ashfield Press, Nov 2015. While emphasising the historic events that occurred along the course of the river, O’Malley presents the reader with a varied snapshot of the Irish countryside. Encounters with farmers, B&B personnel, publicans, anglers and others are blended with his love of nature and a deeply-felt concern for the future of the Blackwater.
Details of this year’s festival programme can be found elsewhere on this website.
Turtle Bunbury is a best-selling author and historian. His recent books include The Irish Diaspora and Ireland’s Forgotten Past, described by BBC History Magazine as ‘impeccably researched.’ Turtle also presents history podcasts including Turtle Bunbury’s Global Irish and Waterways Through Time.
Phan Thi Kim Phuc was born and raised in the village of Trang Bang, 30 minutes north of Saigon. During the Vietnam War, the strategic Route 1 that runs through the village became the main supply road from Saigon to Phnom Penh. On June 8, 1972 together with American co-ordinators, the South Vietnamese Airforce dropped napalm bombs on Kim’s village. Nine-year-old Kim fled from a Cao Dai pagoda, where she and her family were hiding. Two of her infant cousins died in the attack and Kim was badly burned.
Peter Murtagh is a reporter with The Irish Times. He has held a number of senior positions in the paper over many years, as well as in The Guardian newspaper in London. He is well travelled and has written from many places in Europe as well as Asia, South and Central America and South Africa, occasionally observing places from the vantage point of his motorbike. In 2011 he wrote, with his daughter Natasha, a book about their journey together on Camino de Santiago. He has since walked the Portuguese Camino and the Camino Primitivo.
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.”
Paul Clements is the author of four travel books about Ireland, as well as works of biography and criticism, and is a contributing writer to three guidebooks to Ireland. His latest book, Wandering Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way: From Banba’s Crown to World’s End (2016) is based on a journey along the west coast by car and bike, on horseback and on foot. Burren Country: Travels through an Irish limestone landscape is a collection of essays described as a love letter to the Burren published in 2011 by the Collins Press. The Height of Nonsense: The Ultimate Irish Road Trip (2005) and Irish Shores, A Journey Round the Rim of Ireland (1993) have both been reprinted in 2016. Paul’s acclaimed biography on the travel writer, actor and singer Richard Hayward, Romancing Ireland, was published in 2014 by Lilliput Press and adapted for BBC television. He has written and edited two books about the travel writer and historian Jan Morris. In 2012, he edited an anthology The Blue Sky Bends Overall, a celebration of ten years of the Immrama Festival of Travel Writing. A regular contributor to The Irish Times, he has written many ‘Irishman’s Diaries’ on cultural life and heritage, and reviews Irish local history books.
