You notice a lot of strange things when you spend time cycling down back roads just to see where they lead. This gate is near Trillick in County Tyrone.

(more…)

Colin Dardis recalls his early years in Omagh (more…)

The one certainty of a holiday is our having to say goodbye to it. I still remember how, as a child, I used crane my neck and look back at the Rock of Cashel as it receded, its massive grey becoming smaller and paler. Just before it faded to a dot, a sudden bend whipped it from my sight. It was the victory of reality over dream, necessity over wishful thinking.

(more…)

Mullaghfad church, built in 1831 and without electricity, nestles in the heart of the forest on Sliabh Beagh. On the night of 1st July it provided the perfect setting for Sliabh Beagh Arts to create an immersive arts space which would showcase the array of projects they had created over the last year. (more…)

If you have traveled the main A4 road between Clogher and Fivemiletown recently you will probably have seen the stack of silage bales colourfully decorated by leading graffiti artist Kev Largey. They have been featured extensively in social media, on BBC and  UTV, and in the local and national press.
(more…)

It’s Tuesday 7th July, probably the hottest day we’ve seen this Summer and I thought this would be a good day to work outside. I have fair hair and freckles – it wasn’t! (more…)

For two days, on the banks of the Erne surrounded by the historic buildings of the Watergate, Maguire Castle and Inniskillings Barracks, the Living Legacies team worked in intense creativity with two writers groups, the Fermanagh Writers and the Omagh Robins.

(more…)

I’m sure many writers will agree that using a prompt is a great way to develop a story idea and get your writing flowing. So, if a phrase or a sentence or a photograph can stir our imaginations, what about using real objects? (more…)

Awareness through observation is an aspect of Conscious Writing, a new holistic approach grounded in cutting-edge scientific research. It draws on age-old wisdom and unifies the fields of mindfulness psychology and neuroscience. (more…)

In a small Chapel in rural Warwickshire a man is buried with three other members of his close family, in front of the altar. There is a rhyme on his headstone containing a curse on those who would disturb his bones. Why are he, and his words, still important today four centuries after his death? (more…)

The ideas for many of the stories I write come from snippets I hear or read about past events in County Fermanagh. I first heard the tale of the Cooneen or Coonian Ghost not long after my husband and I moved to near Brookeborough, more than a decade ago. (more…)

You and I are already connected
so deeply related – bound by invisible kinship
beyond this window into which you peer.
Let’s return to common ground
to walk with each other in silence
and remember together
our place in the family of things.

(more…)

Publishing your work as a ebook can be a cheap, simple and low-risk way of getting your work ‘out there’, or it can be a complement to more traditional forms. (more…)

J.G. Ballard’s 1975 cult novel High-Rise is perhaps better appreciated as a metaphor for an inexplicable breakdown of social order. (more…)