Shelfmarks with Conor W. O'Brien

Shelfmarks is a podcast by the Royal Irish Academy podcaster-in-residence Zoë Comyns. Every other week Zoë will sift through the Academy collection for Shelfmarks (biographies, manuscripts, books and reference from the collection) and invite a guest writer to discuss their own relationship with the natural world. Each writer has been specially commissioned to write pieces exploring their own relationship with nature.

Shelfmarks goes live every other Sunday and episodes are available on SoundCloud, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this bonus episode of Shelfmarks, Zoë meets with Conor W. O'Brien. Conor is the author of two books: Ireland Through Birds, a journey around Ireland and through the four seasons in search of 12 of our rarest and most elusive birds, and Life in Ireland: a Short History of a Long Time, both published by Merrion Press.

Conor joined us for our Culture Night special episode of Shelfmarks to talk about writing and the natural world. One of the aims of this series is to commission new writing about the natural world and for this bonus episode Conor has written a short piece on the wolf in Ireland.

A full episode of Shelfmarks will be back next week with Manchán Magan. This series is funded by the Arts Council Literature Project Award.