Nell McCafferty

Nell McCafferty
Born	March 28, 1944(1944-03-28) Derry, Northern Ireland
Residence	Ranelagh, Dublin
Alma mater	Queen's University Belfast
Occupation	Journalist, writer
Home town	Derry
Religion	Raised Roman Catholic Currently atheist
Partner	Nuala O'Faolain

Nell McCafferty (born 28 March 1944) is an Irish journalist, playwright, civil rights campaigner and feminist. In her journalistic work she has written for The Irish Press, The Irish Times, Sunday Tribune, Hot Press and The Village Voice.

McCafferty was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, to Hugh and Lily McCafferty, and spent her early years in the Bogside section of Derry — a neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city, which was home to the majority of its Catholic population. Although her family were not wealthy, she had a comfortable upbringing and entered Queen's University Belfast, where she took a degree in Arts. After a brief spell as a substitute English teacher in Northern Ireland and a stint on an Israeli kibbutz, she took up a post with The Irish Times. It was her career in journalism, commentating on Northern Irish life and Republican politics that brought her to public fame, and her outspoken attitudes on abortion, sexuality, feminism and contraception (in what was then a conservative nation) earned her a certain amount of notoriety.^{[citation needed]}

In 1990, McCafferty won a Jacob's Award for her reports on the 1990 World Cup for RTÉ Radio 1's The Pat Kenny Show. McCafferty lives in Ranelagh, an area of Dublin. McCafferty published her autobiography, Nell, in 2004. In it, she explores her upbringing in a deeply sectarian and later war-riddled Derry, her relationship with her parents, her fears about being gay,^[1] the joy of finding a domestic haven with the love of her life, the Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain, and the pain of losing it.

In 2009, after the publication of the Murphy Report into the abuse of children in the Dublin archdiocese, McCafferty confronted Archbishop Diarmuid Martin asking him why the Catholic Church had not, as a "gesture of redemption", relinquished titles such as "Your Eminence" and "Your Grace."^{[citation needed]} Nell has recently courted controversy with a radio declaration that the Minister for Health Mary Harney is an alcoholic, a spat with Beaumont hospital over her treatment for a brain aneurysm, a nude photoshoot, and a public offer to euthanize with her stash of morphine any ailing friend who asks.

The Irish Times wrote that "Nell's distinctive voice, both written and spoken, has a powerful and provocative place in Irish society."^[2]

Bibliography

• A Woman to Blame: the Kerry Babies Case
• Peggy Deery: A Derry Family at War
• Nell (Penguin, 2004)

References

1. ^ Chrisafis, Angelique (November 22, 2004), "Just call me Nell", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1356491,00.html, retrieved 2007-11-30 
2. ^ "Nell McCafferty". Scríobh Literary Festival, 2005. Retrieved on April 14, 2008.

Persondata
Name	Maccafferty, Nell
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1944-03-28
Place of birth	Derry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Date of death
Place of death