Join award-winning nature writers, growers and advocates Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Ruby Free discussing the importance of community and creativity for personal and planetary health. Kerri and Ruby will shine a light on key messages from their work and writing and the creative process behind the pages.
Ruby Free is an award-winning Campaigner, Writer and Conservation Biologist based in County Antrim. Her first book, Rathlin, A Wild Life has just been published. Passionate about saving nature and reconnecting people to it, she’s worked and volunteered in the environmental conservation sector since she was 16 and has been named one of the 100 most influential Environmental Professionals in the UK on the ENDS Power List.
Since living on Rathlin Island and moving to Ballyconnelly Farm, Ruby has pursued an MSc in Ecological Management and Conservation Biology, which took her to another island off the coast of Canada where she conducted her research thesis.
Back home in Ireland, Ruby has been working away at Ballyconnelly Farm with her partner Craig, setting up a community growing space and rewilding areas of the farm for nature. Alongside her passion of nature-writing, these days any spare opportunities to unwind are spent adventuring with her dog Isla, surfing, growing food or illustrating.
Kerri ní Dochartaigh is a mother, writer and grower. Her work currently explores ideas of one- anotherness, interconnectedness and ecologies of care.
Her first book, Thin Places, was published in Spring 2021, for which she was awarded the Butler Literary Award 2022, highly commended for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021, longlisted for the Prix Nicolas Bouvier 2024 and shortlisted for the Ireland Francophonie Ambassador’s Literary Award in 2024.
Cacophony of Bone was published in May 2023 and was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2023.
She lives in the West of Ireland with her family.
There will be the opportunity for the audience to ask Ruby and Kerri about their work as part of this event, but if anyone has any questions they would like to submit now that could be covered in more detail during their conversation, please feel free to email these to Jacky Hawkes – ja***@co*********.uk
About Rathlin: A Wild Life In 2021, Ruby Free, 21, got her dream job working on an RSPB reserve. But this position wasn’t for the faint hearted – it meant moving to live on Rathlin Island, off the County Antrim coast. One of the wildest and most biodiverse corners of the UK and Ireland, to Ruby, who had grown up in the south-west of England, it felt both thrilling and very far from home.
Ruby thought she knew what wildness was but arriving on the island alongside a quarter of a million seabirds, her perception of it changed forever. From swimming with seals and late-night trips to hear the call of the corncrake, to spotting dolphins from her front door and getting to know some very special seabirds, this is the story of Ruby’s time on Rathlin. It’s also the story of what happened next – how Ruby took everything she’d learned through living on the island to the following stage of her life.
Heartfelt, impassioned and full of joy, Rathlin, A Wild Life is a love letter to the island and the wildlife Ruby finds there, but it’s also a call to action; a reminder of everything we stand to lose if we don’t change.
“This book highlights the pure joy of experiencing nature but is expertly balanced with the reality that we could, and are, losing the battle to protect it.” Megan McCubbin, Wildlife Broadcaster and Zoologist
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