With the thirty-ninth G8 Summit soon to be held in a quiet corner of County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, not too far from where I live, I got to thinking that there’s probably lots of people who know little about this county. They likely were never really interested before but they might just want to know a bit about it now. So I got together several articles that I had written for an Irish magazine about people, places and institutions in the county and I put them together in a short collection, Fermanagh Gems.

County Fermanagh has pretty and sometimes dramatic landscapes, a rich history and talented local artisans. For these six articles I selected several gems: a natural wonder, enduring or innovative institutions and a gifted craftsman. Some are well-known, others might be called hidden gems; I wrote about each of them because I felt they deserved to be allowed to shine.

Each of the articles in Fermanagh Gems is a snapshot of a Fermanagh place, institution or person at a significant moment in its existence. In my writing I visited Marble Arch Caves on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of its show cave, Belleek Pottery on its 150^th anniversary, the Graan monastery during its centenary year, Headhunters Railway Museum at the end of its first decade and Frankie McPhillips, a craftsman who has carried on the Irish fly-tying tradition for the past thirty-five years. Together I hope these articles will give readers a glimpse into Fermanagh life.

Fermanagh Gems is available as an Amazon ebook.