Nuala O'Faolain - one of Ireland's best-known journalists and a feminist who gained international fame with her outspoken 1996 memoir Are You Somebody? - has died of lung cancer, just weeks after revealing her illness in a radio interview. She was 68.
O'Faolain became a bestselling author on both sides of the Atlantic in 1996 with the publication of her intimate memoir Are You Somebody? It recounted her tough family upbringing with a philandering father and alcoholic mother, descent into her own alcohol abuse, and a lifetime struggle to attain professional, social and sexual fulfilment. The book touched a particular nerve among adult female readers because of its exploration of the soul-searching of a middle-aged, unmarried, childless woman. It caused headlines at home because of her candid admission to having a lengthy lesbian affair with a prominent Irish journalist, later identified as Northern Irish civil rights activist Nell McCafferty.
O'Faolain had several long-term relationships, with McCafferty and with prominent male artists and intellectuals, but never married or had children, a frequent theme in her writing.
She died of complications caused by lung cancer on Friday at a hospice in south Dublin.
More about the life of Nuala O'Faolain is in the 365gay.com story linked below.