{"id":6976,"date":"2019-04-20T05:03:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T12:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=6976"},"modified":"2019-04-24T21:33:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-25T04:33:07","slug":"lyra-mckee-lost-girl-of-the-troubles-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=6976","title":{"rendered":"“Lyra McKee: Lost Girl of the Troubles”, The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martin Doyle, Books, Dublin, Apr 19, 2019<\/p>\n

She made her name as a journalist covering the Troubles\u2019 legacy and was set to win fame as an author<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe past is never dead,\u201d wrote William Faulkner. \u201cIt is not even past.\u201d<\/p>\n

The senseless shooting dead of journalist and author Lyra McKee by dissident republicans in Derry last night feels like the worst of our past reaching out its cold, dead hand to rob us of the best of our future.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe were the Good Friday Agreement generation, destined to never witness the horrors of war but to reap the spoils of peace. The spoils just never seemed to reach us.\u201d McKee was writing here in a typically empathetic essay<\/a>about the toll the legacy of the Troubles took on the young in the form of suicide.<\/p>\n

McKee, already an acclaimed journalist, looked set to reap the spoils of peace with the publication by Faber & Faber next year of her much-anticipated novel The Lost Boys. There is a risk that it too may be lost as the book is unfinished, possibly compounding our loss.<\/p>\n

Only last month, I featured her in an article Best of Irish: 10 rising stars of Irish writing<\/a>: \u201cNorth Belfast, once the cockpit of the Troubles, is suddenly a hotbed of fiction, thanks to Man Booker winner Milkman by Ardoyne\u2019s Anna Burns, flanked by Paul McVeigh\u2019s The Good Son and David Keenan\u2019s For the Good Times. Next up is Lyra McKee, a 28-year-old journalist, whose debut, The Lost Boys, will be published by Faber next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lost Boys will explore the disappearances of a number of children and young men during the Troubles. Many of them were not believed to be victims of the IRA or the UVF. Some were kids who left home for school and never came home and their disappearances were never solved by the police. McKee will investigate what happened to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angels With Blue Faces, a non-fiction novella about the murder in 1981 of Rev Robert Bradford, the Ulster Unionist MP for South Belfast is due to be published shortly by Excalibur Press. \u201cIt\u2019s only last week that she approved the cover; we\u2019re only a week or so away from releasing it,\u201d publisher Tina Calder said. \u201cThe book has been fully written and edited.\u201d<\/p>\n

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