Manchán Magan is a writer and travel documentary-maker who has won the Screen Directors Guild’s Outstanding Achievement Award for the scores of television documentaries he has presented, written and produced on issues of world culture for TG4, RTÉ, History Channel & Travel Channel. His bilingual plays have been nominated for Irish Times Theatre Awards and he won the Walter Macken Taibhdhearc Drama award in 2014, and the Stewart Parker Irish Language Theatre Award in 2009. He has received commissions to write plays from The Abbey Theatre, BBC and Project Art Centre, and had his two latest bilingual theatrical installations (Gaeilge Tamagotchi, Arán & Im) brought on a nationwide tour by the Abbey Theatre. He writes regularly for The Irish Times, and presents The Almanac of Ireland series for RTÉ Radio 1. His best-selling book Thirty-Two Words For Field explores the insights the Irish language offers into the landscape, psyche and heritage of Ireland, and his illustrated book, Tree Dogs, Banshee Fingers and Other Irish Words for Naturet presents Irish words for the natural world. His talk at Farmleigh, on ‘What can Irish teach us about ecology, our psyche and the Other World?’, should prove to be both extremely entertaining and informatively insightful.
