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Colum McCann
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Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction
Literary fiction
Literary fiction is a term that came into common usage during the early 1960s. The term is principally used to distinguish "serious fiction" which is a work that claims to hold literary merit, in comparison from genre fiction and popular fiction . In broad terms, literary fiction focuses more upon...

. He is a Professor of Contemporary Literature at European Graduate School
European Graduate School
The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland is a privately funded graduate school founded by the non-profit European Foundation of Interdisciplinary Studies. Its German name is Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien...

 and Professor of Fiction at CUNY Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing with fellow novelists Peter Carey, twice winner of the Man Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

, and Nathan Englander
Nathan Englander
Nathan Englander is a Jewish-American author born in Long Island, NY in 1970. He wrote the short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1999...

.

McCann's fiction has been published in 30 languages. His novels include Songdogs, This Side of Brightness, Dancer, Zoli
Zoli
Zoli is the fourth novel of the Irish-born American writer Colum McCann. It follows the life of Marienka Novotna, nicknamed "Zoli", a Slovak Romani woman, from her childhood in the 1930s, through her exile in the 1950s, to her late adult life...

 and Let the Great World Spin
Let the Great World Spin
Let the Great World Spin is a novel by author Colum McCann about New York City. The book received the 2009 National Book Award for fiction, and the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the most lucrative prizes in the world.-Plot:...

. He has written for numerous newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...

, GQ, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, The Irish Times
The Irish Times
The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...

, Granta, and La Repubblica
La Repubblica
la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. Founded in 1976 in Rome by the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, as of 2008 is the second largest circulation newspaper, behind the Corriere della Sera.-Foundation:...

. His short story "Everything in this Country Must" was made into a short film directed by Gary McKendry
Gary McKendry
Gary McKendry is a Northern Irish film and television commercial director. His short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005....

. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005.

In 2003 McCann was named Esquire Magazine's "Best and Brightest" young novelist. He has also been awarded a Pushcart Prize
Pushcart Prize
The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....

, the Rooney Prize
Rooney Prize for Irish Literature
The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature was created in 1976 by the notable Irish American businessman, Dr Dan Rooney, owner and chairman of the NFL franchise, Pittsburgh Steelers....

, the Irish Novel of the Year Award
Irish Book Awards
The Irish Book Awards is an annual Irish literary award given to books and authors in various categories. It is the only literary award supported by all-Irish bookstores. First awarded in 2006, they grew out of the Hughes & Hughes bookstore's Irish Novel of the Year Prize which was inaugurated in...

 and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He was recently inducted into the Hennessy Hall of Fame.

His novel Let the Great World Spin
Let the Great World Spin
Let the Great World Spin is a novel by author Colum McCann about New York City. The book received the 2009 National Book Award for fiction, and the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the most lucrative prizes in the world.-Plot:...

 (2009), uses the true story of Philippe Petit
Philippe Petit
Philippe Petit is a French high-wire artist who gained fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, on 7 August 1974...

 as a "pull-through metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

," and "weaves together a powerful allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

 of 9/11." The novel has won numerous honours, notably the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...

 and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is an international literary award for a work of fiction, jointly sponsored by the city of Dublin, Ireland and the company IMPAC. At €100,000 it is one of the richest literary prizes in the world...

. J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...

 has optioned the film rights and has promised to work with McCann on the screenplay. In 2010, McCann and musician Joe Hurley
Joe Hurley
Joe Hurley is a singer, songwriter, actor, playwright and voice-over artist. He leads the critically lauded bands Joe Hurley & The Gents and Joe Hurley & Rogue’s March. He is the founder and curator of the Allstar Irish Rock Revue, a musical-literary homage to “The Great Irish Songbook”,...

 cowrote a song-cycle – “The House That Horse Built (Let the Great World Spin)” – based on the character of Tillie.

Biography

McCann was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a reporter for The Irish Press
The Irish Press
The Irish Press was an Irish national daily newspaper published by Irish Press plc between 5 September 1931 and 25 May 1995.-Foundation:...

. He arrived in the United States with the purpose of writing the Great American Novel
Great American Novel
The "Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel that is distinguished in both craft and theme as being the most accurate representative of the zeitgeist in the United States at the time of its writing. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state,...

. In 1986 he took a bicycle tour across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. In 1992 he married Allison Hawke and moved to Japan, where the McCanns lived for a year and a half. He and his wife then moved to New York where they currently reside with their three children, Isabella, John Michael, and Christian.

On 16 June 2009, McCann published a Bloomsday
Bloomsday
Bloomsday is a commemoration observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904...

 remembrance of his long-deceased grandfather, whom he met only once, and of finding him again in the pages of James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

.

McCann holds a BA from the University of Texas.

On 15 June 2011, it was announced that Colum McCann had won the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is an international literary award for a work of fiction, jointly sponsored by the city of Dublin, Ireland and the company IMPAC. At €100,000 it is one of the richest literary prizes in the world...

, the most lucrative literary award in the world. It was only the second time that an author of Irish origin had won the award. McCann won the award for his novel Let the Great World Spin. Among the judges were John Boyne
John Boyne
John Boyne is an Irish novelist.- Biography :He was educated at Terenure College, before heading to trinity college, dublin, and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where he won the Curtis Brown prize. But it was during his time at Trinity that he began to get published...

 and Michael Hofmann
Michael Hofmann
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet who writes in English and a translator of texts from German.-Biography:...

. The judging panel described the book as a "remarkable literary work [...] a genuinely 21st century novel that speaks to its time but is not enslaved by it", noting the book's opening pages in which "the people of New York city stand breathless and overwhelmed as a great artist dazzles them in a realm that seemed impossible until that moment; Colum McCann does the same thing in this novel, leaving the reader just as stunned as the New Yorkers, just as moved and just as grateful". Lord Mayor of Dublin
Lord Mayor of Dublin
The Lord Mayor of Dublin is the honorific title of the Chairman of Dublin City Council which is the local government body for the city of Dublin, the capital of Ireland. The incumbent is Labour Party Councillor Andrew Montague. The office holder is elected annually by the members of the...

 Gerry Breen
Gerry Breen
Gerry Breen is an Irish Fine Gael politician and a former Lord Mayor of Dublin.Born in Clontarf in Dublin, Breen first entered politics in 1981 when he joined Fine Gael. In the 1999 local elections, he was elected to Dublin City Council representing the five seat Clontarf local electoral area...

 said it was "wonderful and fitting to have a Dublin winner in the year that Dublin was awarded UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

 City of Literature
City of Literature
UNESCO's City of Literature program is part of its Creative Cities Network which was launched in 2004. The Network was born out of UNESCO's Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity initiative which was created in 2002...

 designation, a designation in perpetuity". Interviewed afterwards, McCann praised fellow nominated writers William Trevor
William Trevor
William Trevor, KBE is an Irish author and playwright. He is considered one of the elder statesman of the Irish literary world and widely regarded as the greatest contemporary writer of short stories in the English language....

 and Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li is a Chinese American writer. Her debut short story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers won the 2005 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and her second collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl was shortlisted for the same award...

, suggesting that either would have been worthy winners.

Books about Colum McCann

  • Cusatis, John. Understanding Colum McCann. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011.(Online excerpt)

External links

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