Malachi O'Doherty

Malachi O'Doherty is a writer and journalist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has published twelve books so far, works of memoir, social and political history and fiction. His main areas of interest are Northern Ireland, religion and terrorism.

His first novel, Terry Brankin Has A Gun was published in 2020 by Merrion. He has written three studies of the IRA, The Trouble With Guns (Blackstaff 1998), The Telling Year, Belfast 1972 (Gill and Macmillan 2007) and a biography of the former Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams (Faber and Faber 2017). His memoir-led account of social and cultural change during the Troubles, Fifty Years On: The Troubles and the Struggle for Change in Northern Ireland, was published in 2019 by Atlantic.

The Year of Chaos (Atlantic 2021) follows the period of greatest violence in Northern Ireland through memoir and interviews.

Two recent works by Dr O’Doherty address the prospects of constitutional change in Ireland and the sectarian character of Northern Ireland. These are: Can Ireland Be One (Merrion 2022) and How To Fix Northern Ireland (Atlantic 2023).

Malachi has also written a book on cycling, On My Own Two Wheels (Blackstaff 2012) and has provided photography for his own books and for Strabane, a poetry book by his wife Maureen Boyle. He has contributed short stories in a range of journals including The Honest Ulsterman, The Hindustan Times and The Erotic Review. 

Malachi has a PhD in Creative Writing from Queen’s University (‘a real one, not one of the honorary ones’, he is quick to insist) and in 2019 he was given a Major Artist Award by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.