Memoirists From Northern Ireland

"As for , we are in a really good place now because we are acknowledging more and more how unfair the business has been in the past. There were really strong male voices at the forefront and now it seems like we are making room at the table for other people, and writers from places we never really allowed into the . That incorporates race and gender and , and class as well, so we are seeing people writing nature who we didn’t get to see before. We see mothers who just get an hour a day to write and they send off to a contest and they win and black writers and BIPOC writers who are writing and being recognized for their work. In the natural world we are all on the same level but that hasn’t happened in the publishing world. Seeing things change gives me such joy."

"In old , butterflies were the souls of the dead and it was unlucky to harm one. The , however, was thought to be the devil and was persecuted. The idea of the butterfly as the embodiment of the soul implies their ability to cross into the . My ancestors often saw no boundary at all between wild places and that Otherworld which we cannot see."

"On the morning of my thirty-fifth birthday, I woke up to an ' newspaper article entitled 'Mass extinction of species is happening in Ireland'. The article stated that a third of the species groups examined are threatened with extinction, predominantly due to , , and . A number of species are, in fact, , and without urgent action being taken immediately, they will simply disappear entirely from this island. That morning, I spent so many hours researching what we have already lost — what we risk losing any day — that I nearly wept with the sadness of it all. Some of those creatures in most danger are the , the , the , the bumblebee, the , the and the ."

"... Cacophony of Bone is a record of days, a meditation on the passing of time, and a deep noticing of the world around us—trees, moths, birds, water, and the comfort of animals. ... Cacophony of Bone revisits similar topics from ní Dochartaigh’s first memoir, Thin Places, but with a new perspective—of sobriety, finding a partner to share life with, a home she may stay at longer than any other place, and the new longing to become a mother."