Lyra McKee

Publication of her first book, a non-fiction work titled Angels with Blue Faces, was imminent at the time of her death. It deals with the Provisional IRA killing of Belfast MP Robert Bradford. McKee sought crowdfunding to finance its publication, and it was scheduled for publication by Excalibur Press. She subsequently signed a two-book deal with Faber and Faber. At the time of her death, her second book, The Lost Boys, was scheduled for release by Faber in 2020, but remained unfinished. It concerns the disappearances of Thomas Spence and John Rodgers from Belfast's Falls Road in November 1974. Faber and Faber had compared the work to that of Anna Funder's Stasiland and Andy O'Hagan's The Missing.

On 11 February 2020, four men, aged 20, 27, 29 and 52, were arrested under the Terrorism Act in Derry. A 52-year-old man was charged with McKee's murder the following day.

McKee wrote on the consequences of The Troubles. She notably wrote "Suicide of the Ceasefire Babies", an article on teenage suicides linked to the conflict. At the time of her death, McKee was researching unsolved killings during The Troubles in Northern Ireland of the late 20th century. In March 2019 Irish Times writer Martin Doyle featured McKee in his article "Best of Irish: 10 rising stars of Irish writing".

On 18 April 2019, McKee was shot during rioting in the Creggan area of Derry, Northern Ireland. Violence broke out after police raids on dissidents with the aim of seizing munitions ahead of the Easter Rising commemorative parades due to take place in the area that weekend. The disturbances were centred on Fanad Drive. Youths threw petrol bombs and burnt two vehicles. Police said that a gunman then fired up to twelve shots towards police officers. McKee, who was on Fanad Drive and standing near an armoured police Land Rover, was wounded in the head. Mobile phone footage and police CCTV footage shows a masked gunman, believed to be a member of the New IRA, opening fire with a handgun. McKee was taken by police, in an armoured Land Rover, to Altnagelvin Area Hospital, where she later died. Police blamed dissident republicans for her death. The last time a journalist was killed in the UK was the 2001 assassination of Martin O'Hagan.

Leona O’Neill, a fellow Derry journalist who witnessed and wrote about McKee's killing, later received online threats, alleging that she was responsible, or had invented her account of the shooting.

In 2018 she became a trustee of Headliners, the charity that had helped her as a teenager to start her career in journalism.

She gave a TEDx talk, "How uncomfortable conversations can save lives", at TEDxStormont Women in 2017, about the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.

In 2011, McKee joined the staff of news aggregator Mediagazer, a sister site of technology news aggregator Techmeme. In 2014, she came to wider public attention with the publication of a blog post titled "Letter to my 14-year-old self" in which she described the challenges of growing up gay in Belfast; it was subsequently made into a short film. McKee's work as a journalist included a number of pieces that appeared in both domestic and international media. Among these were articles she wrote for Mosaic (republished by The Atlantic), The Belfast Telegraph, Private Eye and BuzzFeed News. In 2016 Forbes magazine named her as one of its "30 under 30 in media" because of her work as an investigative reporter.

Lyra Catherine McKee (/ˈ l ɪər ə m ə ˈ k iː / 31 March 1990 – 18 April 2019) was a journalist from Northern Ireland who wrote for several publications about the consequences of the Troubles. She also served as an editor for Mediagazer, a news aggregator website. On 18 April 2019, McKee was fatally shot during rioting in the Creggan area of Derry.

McKee was born on 31 March 1990 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her interest in journalism began at fourteen years old when she wrote for the school newspaper at St Gemma's High School. By the following year she joined Children's Express (shortly to be renamed Headliners), a charity that supports young people through helping them develop journalism skills, and through that was awarded the Young Journalist Award by Sky News in 2006. She studied online journalism at Birmingham City University under Paul Bradshaw, pursuing an Master of Arts degree, but did not graduate. She was posthumously awarded an MA in online journalism in January, 2020; her sister, Nichola Corner, accepted the degree on her behalf.