Anthony Murphy

I'm an author and journalist living in Drogheda, Ireland. I've been writing since I was about five, and even in my early years I was banging away on my father's old typewriter. I'm interested in many things, but my books are primarily inspired by the ancient myths and monuments of the Boyne Valley, where the world-famous stone age monuments of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth are located, only a few miles from where I live.

I write both fiction and non-fiction. Perhaps my most well-known book is 'Island of the Setting Sun', which was the result of eight years of research with the artist Richard Moore. Since then, I wrote a book about Newgrange and have more recently followed my lifelong ambition to write novels, with the publication first of my novella, Land of the Ever-Living Ones, followed by the more recent publication of my novel 'The Cry of the Sebac'. In 2017, my book Mythical Ireland: New Light on the Ancient Past was published and sold out in a year before being reprinted. My latest non-fiction work is called 'Dronehenge: The Story Behind the Remarkable Discovery at Newgrange' and is about my discovery of a 4,500-year-old giant monument in Ireland's Boyne Valley, close to where I live. My newest book is a mytho-poetic work of literary fiction called Return to Segais. It is inspired by the myths of the river Boyne here in Ireland and uses the symbols and metaphors of myth, vision and dream to weave a text of imagination around the human experience of life and landscape exemplified by the life cycle of the salmon. It was written in an unconventional manner – using the old-fashioned pen and paper.

It is probably the desire of most writers to make a living from their craft, and to become full-time authors. This is also my dream. But while dreaming, and in order to keep the kids fed and the mortgage paid, I work in the newspaper industry. I was the Design Editor at the Drogheda Independent before moving to a rival newspaper, the Drogheda Leader, as Editor. I then became Editor of the Dundalk Democrat newspaper, and currently I work as a sub editor and graphic designer at the Irish Farmers Journal and The Irish Field newspapers. It's now 25 years since I got my first job in newspapers. You could say I'm a bit obsessed with journalism. But I'm also obsessed with writing, and I write as often as possible.

I run the Mythical Ireland website, and these days a lot of my new writing can be found on its blog. I'm currently working on another non-fiction book about mythology, but I firmly believe that there's at least another dozen books in me ...