Morag Prunty
Novelist and Columnist
Stop Dreaming of a Better Life …and start living the Dream You Already Have!
Morag Prunty (aka Kate Kerrigan) is a novelist and newspaper columnist “living the dream” as she describes her life in County Mayo with husband and two young sons.
In the 1980’s Morag's dream came true when she became the youngest editor of a national woman’s magazine in London when she was just twenty-one. Having left school at fifteen, she trained as a hairdresser before taking a dramatic sidestep into magazine publishing. By the time she was 25, Morag was all but burnt out, having edited three of Britain’s top young women’s title (Looks, more! and Just Seventeen), she decided to follow her dream of living in her parents native Ireland and returned to Dublin where she became editor of Irish Tatler and continued to work as a media consultant in both the U.K and Ireland.
As she worked, Morag wrote fiction in her 'spare' time - hoping that one day she would get a book published. In 2000 another dream came true when she was offered a huge advance from fiction publishers Pan Macmillan. Morag gave up her job and rote four comic chick-lit novels in four years then, in 2005, her contract complete, she changed her writing style completely and became “Kate Kerrigan” – under which name she has written four critically acclaimed novels, including Recipes For A Perfect Marriage which was translated into 15 languages and Ellis Island which was selected for the Channel4 TV Bookclub.
In 2009 Kate’s life was turned upside down with the sudden loss of her beloved brother Tom – an alcoholic living homeless in London. Unexpectantly pregnant at the age of 46, while she was struggling to recover from the birth of her son and still reeling from her own brother's death - her brother and father-in-law both died suddenly and shockingly in quick succession. Morag's marriage became consumed with depression, all faith was gone - and there seemed to be no way out.
Her efforts to recover her emotional composure after her “annus horribulous” precipitated her searingly honest column in The Irish Mail where she shares the pain and joy of her “ordinary” life in the country with her husband and two sons.
Morag has since written Little Bursts of Happiness, a memoir detailing how the birth of her son and death of her brother changed her relationship with her own life – for the better.
“As a hairdresser I dreamed of being a magazine editor and made it happen. I dreamed then of being a published novelist, being married with children living in a big old house in the country with a garden full of apple-trees. Every dream I ever had, I went after and achieved. My brother’s death made me stop and think. I realised then that what I needed to do was stop constantly raising the bar on my life and start to live like I already had everything I ever dreamed of.
Kate’s talk focuses on her own personal experiences - encouraging the audience to reassess their perceptions of happiness and success to achieve a more meaningful and satisfied relationship with their own lives. She tells how she has learned to celebrate life through adopting an "attitude of gratitude" for the small moments every day when you realize you have something you have always wanted. The big stuff like a loyal husband or a healthy child or small things like a warm fire or a new pair of Wolford tights - she encourages us to find solace and succor each day though filling it with as many "Little Bursts of Happiness" as we can.
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