Writer Nuala O'Faolain has died.

[CBHagman]

Journalist Nuala O'Faolain, author of the novel My Dream of You and the memoirs Are You Somebody? and Almost There, has died of cancer. She was 68 years old.

There's something about her life story that fascinates me and breaks my heart. By all accounts, she didn't exactly take the conventional roads to career and relationships.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/11ofaolain.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

Ms. O’Faolain inherited her mother’s hunger for love and her father’s flair for journalism. After attending a convent school in the north of Ireland — she had been expelled from her first school for sneaking off to dances to meet boys — she studied English at University College, Dublin, and medieval English literature at the University of Hull before earning a postgraduate degree in English from Oxford.

She then returned to University College as a lecturer in the English department. “I had no sense of being at the start of a career,” she later wrote. “My aim in life was something to do with loving and being loved.” And so it stayed for many years.

Drinking heavily and unlucky in love, Ms. O’Faolain drifted from one failed relationship to another but also built a successful broadcasting career. She took a roving job with a new unit at the BBC called Open Door, a kind of community-access documentary department that allowed Ms. O’Faolain to create programs on topics as varied as transsexuals or the troubles in Northern Ireland.

In 1977 she returned to Ireland to produce current-affairs television programs for Radio Telifis Eirann, the national broadcasting station, many of them reflecting a newfound commitment to feminism and the plight of Irish women, notably “Plain Tales,” a series in which ordinary Irishwomen faced the camera and the stories of their lives. She also embarked on a 15-year romantic relationship with Nell McCafferty, a prominent Irish journalist and civil-rights campaigner.

And of course there's a lot more to the story...

May she have found peace at last.