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New Irish Writing: Thin Places, with Kerri ní Dochartaigh

A mix of memoir, nature writing and history: Thin Places is Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s story of a wild Ireland, an invisible border, an old conflict and the healing power of the natural world.

Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town. But for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year they were forced out of two homes and when she was eleven a homemade petrol bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like Kerri’s, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape.

In Thin Places, a mixture of memoir, history and nature writing, Kerri explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, how violence and poverty are never more than a stone’s throw from beauty and hope, and how we are, once again, allowing our borders to become hard, and terror to creep back in. Kerri asks us to reclaim our landscape through language and study, and remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map. It will always be ours but, at the same time, it never really was.

Kerri will be in discussion with Patrick Limb, a barrister and Trustee of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.

This event will be BSL interpreted. PLEASE NOTE that due to the way Zoom is implemented on the iPad you will not be able to see the interpreter during any screensharing – if this is a problem for you please use another device to access the event.

Supported with National Lottery funding by Arts Council England.

Tickets £3, or £14.99 including a copy of Thin Places (UK only, P&P free). Register via Eventbrite