Faber signs two from 'rising star' Lyra McKee

Faber has signed two books by "rising star of investigative journalism", Lyra McKee. 

Laura Hassan, editorial director at Faber, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Will Francis at Janklow and Nesbit after a closely-contested four-way auction. Faber plans to publish the first book, The Lost Boys, in 2020. 

The 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.

McKay said: "My childhood was spent wandering among the shelves of Waterstones in Belfast, taking home books from Faber writers like Seamus Heaney and Louis MacNeice. I cannot express how honoured I am to join this great publisher. I am also incredibly grateful for the opportunity to tell this story and to hopefully help find answers for families who desperately need them."

Hassan said: "I was hooked by McKee's singular, crisp prose and I loved the blend of investigative journalism, true crime, memoir and social history in The Lost Boys. McKee has that knack of engaging the head and the heart - the fate of these children is deeply affecting and we're engaged too with her argument that these missing children tell us something of a whole lost generation, that of the ‘ceasefire babies’. I think Lyra McKee has a long and prestigious writing career ahead of her."

McKee is a 28-year old journalist from Belfast. Her writing has been published in the Independent and the Atlantic, as well as numerous newspapers and magazines in Northern Ireland and internationally. In 2014, McKee's piece about growing up gay in Belfast, "Letter To My 14 Year-Old Self", went viral and was subsequently turned into a short film. In 2016, she was named one of Forbes 30 under 30 in media in Europe.