[16] McKay was a human rights and cultural consultant advisor to Infinity Ward for the creation of the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
[17][18] McKay serves on the Honorary and Advisory Board of the humanitarian NGO Emergency USA which supports healthcare to victims of war, poverty and landmines in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq, Italy, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Uganda.
A war that becomes an official genocide, causes millions to run from their homes, compels the slaughtering of thousands in the most horrific of ways, and inspires terrorist attacks to transpire across the world.
That is the chilling legacy of the ISIS onslaught, and Only Cry for the Living takes a profoundly personal, unprecedented dive into one of the most brutal terrorist organizations in the world.
Journalist Hollie S. McKay offers a raw, on-the-ground journey chronicling the rise of ISIS in Iraq exposing the group's vast impact and how and why it sought to wage terror on civilians in a desperate attempt to create an antiquated caliphate.
The book, constructed chronologically through memos, captures the historical impact of ISIS across Iraq and Syria, as seen through the eyes of sex slave survivors, internally displaced people, persecuted minorities, humanitarian workers, religious leaders, military commanders, and even the terrorists themselves.
To truly understand the nature of terrorism and extremism to stop another ISIS from spilling needless blood we must listen to the lessons of those who lived it, fought it, joined it and rejected it.In 2023, McKay released Afghanistan: The End of the US Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule.
Officially termed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, it’s a government that triggers immense fear among the population, having reigned with an iron fist pre-9/11 and waged a brutal insurgency from the mountaintops that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Afghans and foreigners.
Veteran war reporters – writer Hollie McKay and photographer Jake Simkin – walk you through the fall of the U.S. and the rise of the Taliban, drawing you into the minds of the new regime and into the hearts of the Afghanistan people.