Martin McLoone, who has died at 73, was a pioneering influence in media and film studies. Born in Derry on July 12, 1950, he attended St Columb’s, the Catholic boys’ grammar school there, before studying English and history at University College Dublin, where he graduated in 1973.
Before Sally Rooney was the author of bestselling books, and well before those books became buzzy television series, she was an undergraduate student at Trinity College Dublin with a growing pile of unpublished poems and no contacts in the writing world. Her first break came in 2010, when The Stinging Fly, a small Irish literary magazine, agreed to publish her work.
The Stinging Fly has helped launch several of Ireland’s most promising writers. How has a publication with 1,000 subscribers carved a niche in the Irish canon?