An evening with our Political Writer in Residence Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of the acclaimed memoir Thin Places.

Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry at the very height of the Troubles. One parent was Catholic, the other Protestant. In the space of a year Kerri’s family were forced out of two homes and when she was eleven a homemade petrol bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. For families like hers, terror was in the very fabric of the city.

In her memoir of this time, Kerri explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, and how we are again allowing our borders to become hard and terror to creep back in.

Kerri asks us to reclaim and rejoice in our landscape, and to remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map.

Since its publication in 2021 Thin Places has been highly commended for the Wainwright Prize for nature writing and called ‘remarkable’ by Robert Macfarlane.

Kerri ní Dochartaigh has written for numerous national publications including The Guardian, Irish Times and more. She lives in an old railway cottage in the heart of Ireland with her family.