O'Faolain learned she was sick less than three months before her death, The Irish Times reported. By the time she was diagnosed, the cancer had metastasized, and she decided not to undergo chemotherapy.

"I was supposed to start chemotherapy. I was supposed to start 18 weeks of it, six sessions of it. After three sessions they would know if it was working," she said in an interview last month with RTE. "But ... it reduced me to such feelings of impotence and wretchedness and sourness with life ... and fear, that I decided against it."

She returned to Ireland from New York. She died Friday at a hospice in Galway.

After a career as a television producer and journalist, O'Faolain wrote "Are You Somebody?" She followed that memoir up with another one, "Almost There," a novel, "My Dream of You," and "The Story of Chicago May."

Three of her books were on The New York Times best-seller list.

In the last few months before her death, O'Faolain was commenting on the U.S. presidential race for RTE.