About The Author

Manchán Magan is an Irish writer and documentary maker. He writes for the Irish Times on culture and travel, presents the RTÉ podcast The Almanac of Ireland, and is author of the award-winning, best-selling  Listen to the Land Speak (Gill, 2022). His illustrated books include Tree Dogs, Banshees Fingers, and Other Irish Words for Nature (Gill, 2021) and Wolf-Men and Water Hounds (Gill, 2023).  

He has made dozens of documentaries on issues of world culture for TG4, RTÉ, and Travel Channel. He’s on the board of Hometree, a native woodland and land regeneration charity, and Common Knowledge, a non-profit social enterprise teaching skills for a sustainable homelife. He's an ambassador for The Rivers Trust and has lived for the last quarter-century in an oak wood, with bees, hens, and, occasionally, pigs in a grass-roofed house near Lough Lene, Co Westmeath.