LISTEN TO ME CHAT ABOUT DUBLIN: THE LOCAL WAY WITH AMANDA ROGERS ON BLOG TALK RADIO

The Local Way is a series of travel videos I’ve been involved with for the past two years. Here’s a description from the producers:

From searching for the best baguette in Paris to discovering the perfect cup of coffee in NYC, THE LOCAL WAY is a video series that offers its audience a glimpse into a city’s local life. For the past two years, the producers of THE LOCAL WAY have shot hundreds of hours of HD footage in Dublin, NYC, Paris, and Los Angeles. Each episode, hosted by local experts, features one aspect of a city – “NYC Cocktail Culture” and “Dublin’s Music Scene” providing travelers with tips and insights of the people and places they will encounter on a visit.

I have been presenting the Dublin series with my co-author on Dublin on a Shoestring, Katherine Farmar. The NYC-based producers, filmmakers Amanda Rogers and Stephen Mann, have now launched a new website and and a new Indiegogo campaign to help them raise funds for the next phase of the project. They plan to make an app to accompany the videos – which sounds deadly:

With a click of a few buttons on their mobile phone or tablet device, a user can select“local” information based on the information provided within the video series customized for the Local Way mobile application and use it to travel “the local way.”

Amanda’s story is an amazing one:

A Girl’s Dream to Build a Travel Start-Up

I’ve been working on The Local Way for over 2 years now. It is crazy to think that it has been that long since I first approached our first hosts to do a series I conjured up on a trip to Paris in 2010. Now, Since then, The Local Way, LLC has shot a full series in 4 different cities (New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Dublin) with some of the best local experts out there, and I am so proud of what we have already accomplished.

So far, we have shot hundreds of hours of material, more than 100 local places & interviews with locals who run local small businesses. … The LOCAL WAY was created because of a love of showing the stories of local people and supporting small businesses around the world through the documentary form.

Please support The Local Way if you can – it’s a really cool project.

And check out me in this video with owner Tom Mulligan of the Cobblestone, chatting about the great sessions at the pub.

Listen here to me chatting to Matt Cooper on Today FM.

I also talked to Clem Ryan on Kildare FM, which you can hear here; and Dave Fanning, in the Tubridy slot on RTE 2FM – listen here.

UPDATE, 15/2/13: Following my radio interviews, I got invited to chat to Sybil Mulcahy and Martin King on TV3′s The Morning Show – check out the video here. It’s the Feb 14 episode, and I’m the first item.

The piece by Lorraine Courtney covers such topics as my book, Two in a Million, and the award-winning short film based on the book. We also chatted about how the arts can inform healthcare.

I was contacted by Lorraine after she read my piece on ArtsandHealth.ie.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

Fanconi anaemia is a rare genetic disorder that affects two or three people in a million. It causes bone marrow failure and low blood counts, leading to low energy and increased risk of injury and infection. FA patients have a higher risk of contracting cancers, and the average life expectancy is only 29.

At 16, Murnane had a bone marrow transplant. His book, a memoir of living with FA entitled ‘Two In A Million’, is both a coming-of-age tale and a stark account of spending large chunks of your time sick… In striking a remarkable balance between offering a memoir of life with a chronic illness and a memoir of a life simply lived, Murnane has fulfilled his lifelong dream to write – and to write well.

Read the rest here!

All copies are signed – once I make it big, they’ll be worth millions!

Two in a Million by Ben Murnane (Dublin: A&A Farmar, 2008)

€8 + FREE SHIPPING TO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. Signed by the author. Usually dispatched within one working day.

‘Riveting and beautifully written’ – Sunday Independent

‘Fascinating and emotionally charged… peppered with humour and an almost unsettling level of honesty… This is a remarkable story of an erudite young man’s fight for life’ – Evening Echo, ****

Ben is a normal, bright, ambitious student. The only difference between his life and yours is that he has a rare blood disease – Fanconi anaemia – which gives sufferers a life expectancy of 22 years. At the age of 16 Ben became the first person in Ireland to have a revolutionary type of bone marrow transplant. But getting through it wasn’t easy: he suffered a psychotic episode which made him unable to recognise his doctors, his parents… And, before the transplant even began, he had to tell the girl he loved that he had only a 50 per cent chance of survival. Two in a Million describes what it’s like to live with a life-threatening illness, to undergo a life-saving procedure, to recover slowly and try to live normally as a student in Dublin. Told with humour and honesty, this is a remarkable story.

Feather Silence: Poems by Ben Murnane (Dublin: A&A Farmar, 2010)

€8 + FREE SHIPPING TO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. Signed by the author. Usually dispatched within one working day.

‘At their best [these poems] have a little something of the simplicity of the early Kavanagh… Emotionally direct, with “the ordinariness/all hearts/demand”, the poems in Feather Silence, aside from their value as poems, are also fascinating documents in a remarkable journey of survival, testaments in every line to a brave, unbowed, enduring heart – anchored in the ordinary world, yet not afraid to dream.’ – Eamon Grennan

DUBLIN ON A SHOESTRING, edited by Katherine Farmar and Ben, is NOW AVAILABLE FOR ONLY €5. It’s the insiders’ guide to saving money in Ireland’s capital. Check it out!

I have a new article up on ArtsandHealth.ie, a national website and resource for use of the arts in healthcare. The piece is called Blood and Ink, and it describes how writing helped me cope with my illness:

My life has been dominated by two fluids: blood and ink. Blood is the source of so many issues to do with my disease; ink has been my instrument of escape.

FA causes bone marrow failure; it results in low blood counts, leading to low energy and increased risk of injury and infection. FA patients have a much greater risk of contracting cancer than the general population. The average life expectancy remains just 29.

The article also details how I came to be involved in Two Suitcases, a new short film written and directed by Emma Eager and me.

Read the full ArtsandHealth.ie article here – and don’t forget to check out Two Suitcases on YouTube!

VIEW IT HERE

Here are the details:

Two Suitcases – the film

‘When you go into hospital, you take two suitcases with you: one to carry your clothes, and another to pack away your dignity.’

Two Suitcases is an innovative and award-winning new short film, written and directed by Emma Eager and Ben Murnane. Ben has a rare genetic disorder, Fanconi anaemia; when he was 16 years old, he became the first person in Ireland to undergo a new type of bone marrow transplant. The film describes (in 11 minutes) the journey of his transplant and recovery, combining a myriad of storytelling methods, including live action, animation, puppetry, home movie footage, and original music. It was filmed using the iPhone 4S.

Two Suitcases was made with the involvement of teenagers living with chronic illness, who took on roles both on camera and behind the scenes. It has now won two awards: best film in the under-18s category at the 2012 Charlie Chaplin Comedy Film Festival in Waterville, Co Kerry; and best film at the First Cut! Youth Film Festival in Cork. It was also showcased in October 2012 at the Dublintellectual event, ‘Creative Entrepreneurialism and the Humanities’, as part of Innovation Dublin. The short is part of a broader ‘Two Suitcases Project’, established by Emma – with the assistance of a range of artists – to promote and encourage the creativity of young people with chronic illnesses. A new film is to be made with a wider group of teenagers in November 2012, and Emma recently established OAK, a creative web-space for teenagers, as part of the Two Suitcases Project.

Two Suitcases was produced by Helium Children’s Arts and Health in association with SpunOut.ie, with support from the Arts Council, the Vodafone Ireland Foundation, DIT School of Media, and Filmbase. The next phase of the project has been funded by the Arts Council’s Youth Ensembles Scheme.

View the film on YouTube here.

I’ve also been involved recently in another film project, based in part on another my my books, the guide to Dublin I wrote with Katherine Farmar. Check out some videos in the series, Dublin: The Local Way, here. More to follow!

The Dublin series is based in part on the guide to Dublin I wrote with Katherine Farmar. What’s more, Katherine and I are the presenters of the show! Check out some videos in the series, Dublin: The Local Way, here. More to follow!

Emotionally direct, with ‘the ordinariness/all hearts/demand’, these poems are fascinating documents in a remarkable journey of survival, testaments in every line to a brave, unbowed, enduring heart—anchored in the ordinary world, yet not afraid to dream.

       -        Eamon Grennan

Feather Silence is a deeply personal collection that charts the years after Ben Murnane was diagnosed with one of the rarest genetic diseases in the world, Fanconi anaemia: his many agonising days in hospital; those first nervous steps into the world of love; the joy and the pain of memories and the little details of life.

Written alongside Ben’s memoir Two in a Million, these poems shed new light on the remarkable story of illness, friendship and love told there. These are the thoughts that occupied a young man whose life was on the brink, and they read with insight and beauty.

Praise for Two in a Million:

‘riveting and beautifully written’ – Sunday Independent

‘fascinating and emotionally charged… peppered with humour and an almost unsettling level of honesty… This is a remarkable story of an erudite young man’s fight for life’ – Evening Echo, ****

‘inspiring… exceptionally moving’ – Ireland’s Own

Ben Murnane was born in 1984 and graduated from Trinity College in 2008. He has written for The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent, the Evening Herald, the Irish Daily Mail and RTÉ Radio. He is the author of the memoir Two in a Million and co-author with Katherine Farmar of the guidebook Dublin on a Shoestring.

Feather Silence published by A&A Farmar.

All copies bought here signed by the author – €5 + free postage. Usually dispatched within one working day.

Had a fun experience the other week, got my acting on to do a little interview for this shortfilm about donating blood and where donated blood ends up (in me – as the case may be!). It’s a little promo for the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, filmed by some Masters students at Independent Colleges in Dublin. Look – it’s me standing on a bridge in the sun! And getting on the Luas, which in real life I never get anywhere at all! That’s the magic of the movies for you.

One friend pointed out that the line ‘I need other people’s blood to live!’ sounds a bit dodgy. That’s right, I never had Fanconi anaemia, I’m just a vampire. No wonder I’m doing my Masters thesis on Twilight. Transfusions are where it’s at though, boys, bloodsucking is so last century it’s not even funny.

Two in a Million led not only to the next book Dublin on a Shoestring, but also to a deadly job writing for supplements and features with the Irish Independent. It’s mostly the day job that has been taking up my time of late – a very different type of writing to what I’ve been used to all these years. You can take a look at some of my work, and also find evidence that I haven’t been a complete lazy bum, on my Issuu profile (brilliant thing, Issuu).

Then, in some wild act of folly, last September I decided to start studying a one-year full-time Masters in Popular Literature at Trinity College. I am enjoying the course – we get to read porn and comics! – and I do like moving between the two worlds of work and study. But it takes time for extracurricular activities – i.e. updating this site and continuing my own projects – greedily away.

That said, I have been working on a new book which you should be hearing something about very soon, and if anyone is interested in reading advertising features (as I know so many of you are!), be quite sure to check out my Issue site, which is updated regularly enough.