I can’t remember when I first met Lyra McKee. She was that very 21st century thing, a twitter friend. We first came across each other there, back when it was still small enough to feel like a community.
That friendship led eventually to meetups in real life as we attended some of the same events, or whenever she got in touch to compare notes on a story. She spoke twice at the Freelance Forum, most recently last year, and the first time in 2014, when she was 24 years old and already had a CV more crowded than people twice her age.
The last time I met her was in Belfast at the start of March, and it was a brief check-in. We spoke about her move to Derry, made plans for a possible meetup in Donegal over the Summer holidays, and parted ways.
She was young, incredibly gifted, and passionate about the things she wrote about, and the world feels wrong this morning without her in it.
In Memory: Lyra McKee
