Autobiographical & Travel Writer: Jo O'Donoghue

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Coming Soon

Gutsy Travels

Newsflash! I have signed a contract with The Book Guild Publishing. Gutsy Travels, Travelling the world with my invisible friend is due to be published on May 28th, 2025.

Extract from Editorial Report at The Book Guild Publishing.

“Gutsy Travels is a wonderfully inspiring memoir that follows Joanna on her travels around the world with Crohn’s Disease. It is very unique and insightful, and I think it would make a perfect addition to our 2025 title catalogue.”

New Release

Lockdown Stories

Stranded in Nepal, quarantining in Shanghai, separated from family and friends in Barcelona and a “Covid Baby”. These tales, amongst others, capture different experiences from the beginning of the pandemic until 2022.

Testimonials

Reviews of the book from readers who have had a preview!

A truly inspirational book by Joanna whose unwaveringly positive attitude shines through each chapter. Absolutely determined not to let Crohn’s disease define her life in a negative way, she records her travels to some of the remotest parts of the world, staying in places well off the beaten track. This would be a trial in itself to most people but travelling with Crohn’s presents a whole new level of challenge. The lack of access to toilets and the somewhat primitive design of facilities together with the restrictive diet that is a feature of Crohn’s, does not seem to deter Joanna in the slightest. Doing voluntary work and raising money for Crohn’s Charities, we learn about her escapades on the Three Peaks challenge in Transylvania, house building in Cambodia with banana leaves, being on a makeshift saline drip hanging in Madagascar, washing baby elephants in Cambodia and routinely going to bed hungry in Switzerland on her train journey! The style of the book is pacy, often humorous but always culturally sensitive. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book of distinct little stories as it demonstrates how chronic disease doesn’t have to be limiting and can be overcome by courage and determination.

What a shock when Joanna was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease over forty years ago. Gutsy Tales. Travelling with my Invisible Friend demonstrates her refusal to accept this as a barrier to her desire to visit remote areas of the world. The book is a testament to her resilience and adventurous spirit. Joanna has travelled widely, challenging herself with an unwavering determination, often on volunteering expeditions to help others or fundraising for Crohn’s, alongside a quest for travel and adventure. Climbing to Machu Picchu and not on the tourist route. Working with children at a Day Care Centre in Quito at a dump. Building a house for a family in Cambodia. These are just a few of the stories she has to tell. There are some amusing incidents and some quite worrying and even dangerous. Sharing her travel adventures will serve as an inspiration to others, encouraging them to persevere and face new challenges. Gutsy Travels is well worth a read and I can recommend it wholeheartedly.

Travelling the world is exhilarating but can be challenging at times, particularly for someone who faces the issues that Joanna does with a hidden disability. Her determination not to let this hold her back shines through the book and sometimes we even forget it is a problem until she reminds us. Not only has Joanna been able to help others by her volunteer work and raising money for Crohn’s research but she has spread the message about Crohn’s Disease to numerous fellow travellers and people around the world. This book is an entertaining read describing her experiences in Australia, Southeast Asia, South Africa, Madagascar and Central and South America and across the world, which gives readers unfamiliar to these countries an insight into them from her perspective. Hopefully it will encourage others who may face setbacks to push the boundaries and follow in her footsteps. I thoroughly recommend this book.

Having read Joanna’s book of her travels I was transported to places I could only dream of going to. Joanna has shown us how to overcome the challenges she faced travelling with a diagnosis of Crohn’s Disease I admire her courage and her honesty. Travelling the world can be an amazing experience. To travel while you have a medical problem would stop most people in their tracks, Joanna shows us how to overcome adversity, by believing in her ability to know how to navigate the necessary problems. I highly recommend reading this book it shows us the practical and the funny side to travelling with Crohn’s Disease.

Jo, I am really impressed by your book and I hope you are proud of the achievement. Being specific three things are particularly noteworthy.

Firstly, the quality of your writing. That comes as no surprise to me at all with the 3 key ingredients being, authenticity, fluidity and entertainment.

Secondly, the excellence of the other contributors. Clearly, you are not alone in being able to write well.

Finally, the thing that impressed me most or at least came as the greatest surprise was the fact that you were able to pull it all together. How on earth did you find such talented and diverse people? It must have been a logistical nightmare but well worth it!

Kevin Y

The Power of the Stories

Here, Mel details the profound impact the book has on the reader.

This is a powerful collection of writings from around the world, written by those who survived COVID-19 but whose lives were touched by it in ways that are irreversible. It documents the commonalities of experience – initial disbelief, fear, the difficulties of maintaining ordinary domestic life, disruption of travel – which affected people similarly wherever and whoever they were. But then the differences emerge. There are those for whom the quality of life changes for the better – “now I had so little responsibility, a time to reflect” – and those who experienced the illness itself, which, pre vaccination was so unaccountably horrible and terrifying. There are also those who found that all the other health issues that have to be faced in normal times- pancreatic cancer, dementia, Crohn’s disease, continue in a time of COVID and are made so immeasurably worse by it. There are also those who lost family and friends.

The writers are determined, empathetic, resourceful people, often carers, educationalists, travellers, living life passionately and to the full, but all of them experience the same sense of dislocation and awareness of the utter fragility of the lives we have built, dependent on technology, on our ability to travel, on the assumed abundance of food and medicine. At different times and in different places across the world each of these commonplaces were eroded and challenged, and for some were replaced by a dystopian present of threats and fear and confinement, of political systems that met with repression the desperate challenges of COVID-19 – or were merely inadequate or chaotic in their protection of the most vulnerable.

The skull beneath the skin of our precarious way of life was made clear during COVID: but babies were born, houses bought and sold, new relationships forged. We came through, and if, as one writer said, ‘our lives are a little more fragile than we ever realised’ maybe that is a good thing. We know now, as the Ukrainians and Afghans do and our grandparents always did, that nothing, not even normality, can be taken for granted.