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Anna King - Photo credit: Julia Dunin.

Dr. Anna King (PhD, MA, BA) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and ethnographer living in Ireland. Working through a contemplative lens, she explores the interplay between memory, place, and hidden histories through poetic prose, visual storytelling, photography, and experimental layering.

Anna’s practice weaves together research, intuitive exploration, and creative reflection:

“I am particularly drawn to how memory settles into place and season — held quietly within natural rhythms and revealed as shifting echoes over time.”

Since completing her PhD, Anna has developed a series of unique participatory contemplative art practices grounded in deep listening — to landscape, seasonal transitions, and the quiet stories woven into the fabric of place.

Currently, Anna is working on ‘The Cherry Blossom Tales’ - an immersive creative nonfiction project that brings the past to life through storytelling, art, folklore, and community recollections. Funded by Roscommon County Council Creative Ireland Programme 2025, this initiative involves a series of dynamic workshops with students at St. Nathy’s College, culminating in an exhibition during the Ballaghaderreen Arts Festival, 2025.

During her Creative Places Ballaghaderreen Artist Research Residency (2023 - December 2024), Anna developed PLACEWAYS, a project exploring how places are known, imagined, and remembered. It was funded by the Arts Council and Roscommon County Council.

In 2014, Anna earned a Doctorate in Philosophy from NUI Galway (Ethnography and Arts-Based Methodologies). Her research was awarded a prestigious three-year full-time Irish Research Council Scholarship.

“I am drawn to the liminal thresholds between lived experience and remembered feeling — those elusive spaces where memory softens reality into something more fluid, intuitive, and felt.”

Current work: Lifeways

LifeWays is an emerging multidisciplinary project-in-progress exploring how memory moves through landscape, season, and the quiet spaces we often overlook. Rooted in contemplative practice, this work deepens my engagement with sensory storytelling, poetic image-making, and sound.

Evolving from the foundations laid in The Cherry Blossom Tales, this new body of work traces the lifelines — both visible and unseen — that carry experience across time and terrain. It invites a quiet attunement to what lingers just beneath the surface.

Catching the whisper of the unseen, my poetry listens for silence — the quiet echo of beauty hidden in scarred landscapes and forgotten ties.

ABOUT OUR BOOK

During the Covid lockdown, I co-authored Rekindling the Fire: Food and the Journey of Life (Austin Macauley, 2022) with Dr. Martin Ruffley, an award-winning chef and lecturer at GMIT. This deeply personal book brings together Martin’s recipes and reflections with my poetry and creative non-fiction prose.

But Rekindling the Fire is far more than a cookbook. It’s a heartfelt exploration of healing, resilience, and renewal — inspired by Martin’s powerful story of overcoming addiction through the transformative act of cooking. My writing gives voice to his journey through poetic narrative, contemplative storytelling, and insights shaped by my practice of mindful meditation.

As McKenna’s Guides described:

“Anna King drives the narrative of this unforgettable book with skill and subtlety, teasing the wise philosophy of living from the author's fraught experiences.”

Winner, 2023 Gourmand Cookbook Awards — ‘Best in the World’ in the Lifestyle: Drink and Health category.

Also awarded a Special Gourmand Award for Food Culture in the Authors Category.

Rekindling the Fire has been featured in The Irish Independent, The Times, The Irish Examiner, and The Connacht Tribune.