About the Author

Kerri ni Dochartaigh is the author of Thin Places which was highly commended by the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021. She has written for the Guardian, Irish Times, BBC, Winter Papers and others. She lives in an old railway cottage in the heart of Ireland with her family.

@kerri_ni | @kerrinidochartaigh

Reviews

'A remarkable piece of writing. I don't think I've ever read a book as open-hearted as this. It resists easy pieties of nature as a healing force, but nevertheless charts a recovery which could never have been achieved without landscape, wild creatures and "thin places". It is also flocked with luminous details (moths, birds, feathers, skulls, moving water). Kerri's voice is utterly her own, rich and strange. I've folded down the corners of many pages, marking sentences and moments that glitter out at me. Wow' - ROBERT MACFARLANE

'Dochartaigh takes great solace in nature, and much of the book is a meditation on the beautiful landscapes and flora and fauna that surround her . . . Passionate, moving and beautifully written, this is a remarkable account of trauma and ways to acknowledge and overcome it' - Sunday Times

'What was Kerri ni Dochartaigh's burden as a child - to exist in "the gaps between" the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland - has become her gift as a writer. She is sensitive to the legacies of loss and trauma and highly attuned to the gifts of the natural world and the possibilities of place. This is a special, beautiful, many-faceted book' - AMY LIPTROT

'Powerful, unflinching . . . Part hymn to nature, part Troubles memoir . . . Vividly descriptive . . . Thin Places is at heart a survivor's story located in the real and brutally Darwinian world of lived experience' - Guardian, Book of the Day

'An eloquent, moving work of politics, geography and the self. Full of wisdom and deeply engaging' - SINEAD GLEESON