Willy Joseph Madrid Lira (11 September 198029 April 2021), known professionally as Willy Mckey, was a Venezuelan poet and writer. Throughout his career, he won several awards, including Fundarte Prize and the Rafael Cadenas National Young Poetry Contest. In 2021, he was denounced for sexual abuse, accusations that Mckey acknowledged, and the

Public Ministry of Venezuela The Public Ministry of Venezuela is an organ belonging to Citizen Power, it has autonomous and independent character. It is under the direction of the Attorney General of the Republic who is elected by the National Assembly for a period of seve ...

opened a judicial process against him. He committed suicide as a result of these allegations.

Biography

Mckey was the son of a teacher and an operator of the

Caracas Metro The Caracas Metro () is a mass rapid transit system serving Caracas, Venezuela. It was constructed and is operated by Compañía Anónima Metro de Caracas, a government-owned company that was founded in 1977 by José González-Lander who ...

. When he graduated from high school, he spent a few months in a

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seminary proving his religious vocation, when he gave up he decided to study a degree in letters from the

Central University of Venezuela Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...

, where he graduated in 2007. In 2008, he was awarded the Fundarte Prize for the ''Vocado de orphanage'' award and in 2016, he won first place in the first edition of the Rafael Cadenas National Young Poetry Contest with the poem ''Canto 14''. He was also co-editor and collaborator in

Prodavinci Prodavinci is a Venezuelan news site that provides analysis from historians, scholars and scientists. ''Foreign Policy'' called Prodavinci "a one-stop shop for Spanish-language analysis of the Venezuelan reality" while ''The Wall Street Journal'' ...

; Together with Santiago Acosta, he was co-editor of the newspaper project El Salmón, which was awarded the National Book Prize in 2010, and in whose years he collaborated on the ''Papel Literario'' of the newspaper El Nacional. In 2014, he participated in the collective project ''Nuestra Señora del Jabillo'', who mixed poetry with music. It was included in the compilation book "Nuevo País de las Letras" compiled by Antonio López Ortega, where it was listed among the 34 best Venezuelan writers of the generation born in the eighties. Mckey was included as an author in

PROVEA The ''Venezuelan Education-Action Program on Human Rights'' or PROVEA () is one of the most prominent Venezuelan human rights organizations. According to the United Nations Human Rights Council, PROVEA "is an independent and autonomous non-govern ...

's compilation of Venezuelan poetry between 1920 and 2018 "Against Repression." In April 2021, several complaints of sexual abuse were made against him. Mckey issued a statement, acknowledging the allegations and announcing that he would withdraw from all his personal projects, including his collaboration in Prodavinci. On 28 April, the

announced that it would open an investigation against Willy for the allegations of sexual abuse, along with musicians Alejandro Sojo and Tony Maestracci. On 29 April, Mckey killed himself in

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, jumping from the ninth floor of a building. He left three unpublished poetic projects: ''Santo'', a Yoruba-western; CoMYK, a quadricromic epic with poems like ''éste o éste otro'' (this one or this other); ''Pleistoceno'', eighteen songs against oil; and a non-fiction book, ''Ruido'' (Noise), chronicles on music and violence.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mckey, Willy 1980 births 2021 deaths Writers from Caracas 20th-century Venezuelan poets 21st-century Venezuelan poets 21st-century Venezuelan writers Venezuelan male poets Central University of Venezuela alumni Suicides by jumping in Argentina 2021 suicides People charged with sex crimes