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Colum McCann

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Colum McCann
BornColum McCann
(1965-02-28)28 February 1965(age 59)
Dublin,Ireland
OccupationWriter
LanguageEnglish
NationalityIrish,American
EducationJournalism
Alma materDublin Institute of Technology University of Texas at Austin
GenreLiterary fiction
Literary movementPostmodern literature
Notable worksLet the Great World Spin;
Apeirogon
TransAtlantic
Notable awards
Website
colummccann

Colum McCann(born 28 February 1965) is anIrishwriter ofliterary fiction.He was born inDublin,Ireland,and now lives inNew York.He is the co-founder and President of Narrative 4, an international empathy education nonprofit.[1]He is also a Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence atHunter College,New York.[2]He is known as an international writer who believes in the "democracy of storytelling."[3]Among his numerous honors are the U.S National Book Award, the Dublin Literary Prize, several major European awards, and an Oscar nomination.[4]

McCann's work has been published in over 40 languages,[5]and has appeared inThe New York Times,New Yorker,Esquire,Paris Review,The Atlantic Monthly,Granta,as well as other international publications.

McCann is the author of seven novels, includingApeirogon(2020),TransAtlantic(2013) and theNational Book Award-winningLet the Great World Spin(2009). He has also written three collections of short stories, includingThirteen Ways of Looking,released in October 2015.[6]His next book,American Mother,released March 2024 and tells the story of Diane Foley, whose son,James Foley,was captured and killed byISISwhile serving as a freelance combat reporter inSyria.[7]His next novel,Twist,is set to be released in 2025.[8]

Early life[edit]

Ireland[edit]

McCann was born in 1965 inDublin.The fourth of five children, he grew up inDeansgrange,a southern suburb of the city.[9]His mother was fromDerryinNorthern Ireland,and McCann would spend summers with his family there.[10]His father, Sean McCann, was the features editor for theDublin Evening Pressand a prolific author.[11]Colum fondly remembers following his father around the newsroom and seeing the writing process in action.[12]McCann started his writing journey at age eleven, when he rode his bike around theDun Laoghaireborough, reporting on local soccer matches for theIrish Press.[13]

Despite his father's advice to "not become a journalist", McCann began his career as a newspaper writer.[14]He studied journalism at the College of Commerce inRathmines,Dublin (now a part of theTechnological University Dublin).[15]While in school, he wrote for a number of Irish newspapers, including theIrish Independentand theEvening Herald,and in 1983 he was named "Young Journalist of the Year".[16]McCann has said that his time in the Irish newspapers gave him an excellent platform from which to launch a career in fiction.[17]

United States[edit]

McCann moved to the United States in the summer of 1986 to become a fiction writer.[16]He first lived inHyannis, Massachusetts,where he worked on a golf course and as a cab driver. That summer, he bought a typewriter and tried to write "the great Irish American novel", but quickly realized that he wasn't up to the task and that he'd need "to get some experience beyond my immediate white-bread world".[18]Between 1986 and 1988 he took a bicycle across the United States, travelling 12,000 kilometres (about 8,000 miles). "Part of the reason for the trip was simply to expand my lungs emotionally", he said, to come in contact with what he calls "a true democracy of voices".[19]

Throughout the trip, he stayed withNative AmericansinGallup, New Mexico,lived withAmishpeople inPennsylvania,fixed bikes inColorado,and dug ditches to help fight fires inIdaho.[20]He found that the people he met would confide their deepest secrets in him, even though they had just met. He credits those voices—and that trip—with developing his ability to listen to other people.[21]

In 1988, he moved toBrenham, Texas,where he worked as a wilderness educator with juvenile delinquents.[22]He spent two years finishing his undergraduate education atUniversity of Texas at Austinand was inducted intoPhi Beta Kappa.While at UT, a story he published in a campus literary magazine was included in Britain’sBest Short Stories of 1993,an early success in his young literary career.[23]

Career[edit]

Early works[edit]

In 1993, McCann moved toJapanwith his wife Allison, whom he had married the previous year. The couple both taught English, and McCann worked on finishing his first short-story collection,Fishing the Sloe-Black River,and started his first novel,Songdogs.[24]After a year and a half, the couple moved back toNew York Citywhere he, his wife and their three children—Isabella, John Michael, and Christian—still reside.[5]In 1994, following the publication ofFishing the Sloe-Black River,McCann won theRooney Prize,which is awarded to an "emerging Irish writer under forty years of age" with "an outstanding body of work".[25]

Though McCann's early works were well-reviewed, they were not commercially successful enough to support him full-time. Throughout the 1990s, McCann wrote plays and film scripts, including theVeronica Guerinbio-picWhen the Sky Fallsand the playFlaherty's Windows,which ran for six weeksOff-Broadway.[26][27]

Finding Success as a Novelist[edit]

This Side of Brightness(1998) was McCann's first international bestseller.[28]The novel revolves around theNew York City subway,following the "sandhogs" who built its tunnels in the early 1900s and the homeless people who lived in the tunnels in the 1980s.[29]He was inspired by two instances in the early 1900s when men were blown out of subway tunnels into rivers due to explosions.[30]While researching the novel, McCann descended into the subway tunnels three or four times per week. He recalled that, "Being Irish helped me—I was never seen as part of the established order, the system. I was outside. And they were outsiders too. So often I felt aligned with the people who were living underground."[30]

In 2000, McCann releasedEverything in This Country Must,a collection of two short stories and a novella aboutThe Troubles.He grounded the three stories in the conflict, but maintains "an imaginative distance" between reality and his writing, a common sentiment in his works.[31]McCann teamed up withGary McKendryto turn the collection's titular storyinto a short film.After its 2004 release, the film was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Live Action Short Filmin the77th Academy Awards.[32]

McCann's next novel,Dancer,is a fictionalized account ofRudolf Nureyev's life. McCann spent the summer of 2001 teaching English in Russia to research the novel. The book was published on the tenth anniversary ofNureyev'sdeath.[28]

For his 2006 novelZoli,McCann expanded on previously-explored themes such as exile, social outcasting, empathy, and fictionalizing historical events. The main character is a fictionalization of Polish-Romani poetBronisława Wajs(Papusza).[33]While researching the novel, McCann spent two months in Europe visitingRomanicamps.[34]

Let the Great World Spinand International Recognition[edit]

McCann's seventh book (his fifth novel) vaulted him into the international spotlight.Let the Great World Spinis set on 7 August 1974, the morning thatPhilippe Petitwalked on a high wire between the Twin Towers of theWorld Trade Centerin New York City.[35]The novel follows characters who live in New York City, some of whom saw Petit's walk. The book is an allegory to9/11,but only mentions the attacks in one line. McCann's father-in-law worked in the North Tower and walked up to McCann's apartment on theUpper East Sideafter escaping the building. McCann's young daughter said her grandfather was "burning from the inside out", a line that struck McCann as a beautiful metaphor for the nation.[36]

Let the Great World Spinwas received with great critical acclaim. For the book, McCann won the 2009National Book Award for Fiction,the first Irish-born writer to take home the award.[37]The novel also won the 2011International Dublin Literary Award,among many others.J. J. Abramsdiscussed working with McCann to make the novel into a movie.[38]

2010s writings[edit]

In 2010, McCann put his words in a different medium, collaborating withAlonzo Kingto put on a ballet titledWriting Ground.The show, part of theBallets de Monte Carlo,was put up byAlonzo King LINES Ballet.McCann’s poetry is in the ballet’s program but was not spoken in the dances itself.[39]Instead, the dances were set to sacred music from different global cultures.[40]

In 2013, McCann published his eighth book,TransAtlantic.Like many of McCann's other books, the novel uses multiple characters and voices to tell a story based on real events.[41]The book tells the intertwined stories ofAlcock and Brown(the first non-stop transatlantic fliers in 1919), the visit ofFrederick Douglassto Ireland in 1845/46, and the story of the Irish peace process as negotiated bySenator George Mitchellin 1998. At first, McCann thought about just writing about Douglass's visit, but he said "then it would have been a historical novel and... hate the term... It just seems steeped in aspic. I mean every novel's a historical novel anyway. But calling something a historical novel seems to put mittens on it, right? It puts manners on it. And you don't want your novels to be mannered."[42]McCann lived just a few blocks from Senator Mitchell in New York City, but did not meet him until he finished a draft of the book.[43]

In the summer of 2014, McCann was assaulted outside a hotel inNew Haven, Connecticut,while trying to help a woman who was being beaten up on the street.[44]McCann toldThe Irish Timesthat "The irony of it all is that I was at a conference on ’Empathy’ at Yale University with a non-profit I’m involved in, Narrative 4."[45]At this point, he had already started writing his next short story collection,Thirteen Ways of Looking.[46]The book contains three short stories and a novella, each beginning with a stanza fromWallace Stevens's poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird".Though the titular story is about an on-street assault, he wrote it before being attacked.[47]AfterThirteen Ways of Looking's October 2015 release, it went on to win aPushcart Prize.[48]The story "Sh'khol" was included inThe Best American Short Stories 2015.The story "What Time is it Now, Where You Are?" was short-listed for the Writing.ie Short Story of the Year 2015.[49]and for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award2016.[50]

Each week throughout 2016, McCann wrote a blog post giving a piece of advice to young writers (posted on his website here). The edited collection,Letters to a Young Writer,was published by Random House in 2017.[51]

In 2019, McCann returned to playwriting, collaborating withAedin Moloneyto writeYes!Reflections of Molly Bloom.The one-woman show is adapted fromJames Joyce's novelUlyssesand centers around theMolly Bloomsoliloquy.[52]The show ran at theIrish Repertory Theatrein 2019, online in 2020, and again at the Irish Rep in 2022.[53]

2020s:Apeirogon,American Mother,and upcoming works[edit]

Throughout the late 2010s, McCann travelled to the Middle East and started work on his eighth novel,Apeirogon.In the early stages of writing, he said “I’m going to write the novel that has not the two-state solution, but the two-story solution.”[54]Published in February 2020, the book shares the story of two men—one Israeli, and one Palestinian—whose daughters died in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Rami Elhanan,an Israeli graphic designer, lost his daughter to a Palestinian suicide bomber. Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian scholar and previous political prisoner, lost his daughter to an IDF rubber bullet.[55]The pair met in theParents Circle,a cross-cultural group where parents whose children died due to the conflict can come together and share their stories.[56]McCann callsApeirogonhis “Narrative 4 novel” due to its focus on empathy and unlikely connections.[57]Apeirogonwas positively received, gaining a place on theBooker Prizelonglist and winning thePrix du Meilleur Livre Étranger.

His next book,American Mother,was released in March 2024. It tells the story of Diane Foley, whose son,James Foley,was captured and killed byISISwhile serving as a freelance combat reporter inSyria.[8]Foley was once photographed while readingLet the Great World Spin,which floored McCann after Foley died: "There's a photograph of him online reading my book, Let the Great World Spin, and I was shocked by that, absolutely shocked. I was reading the news reports when he was killed, and I saw this photograph, and I looked at the book he was reading."[58]

His next novel,Twist,is set to be released in 2025.[8]

In popular culture[edit]

McCann used to write in a ninth-floor apartment sitting with a computer device on his lap on the floor of a cupboard with no windows located between "two very tight walls", surrounded by messages written by himself and others.[59]

"I believe in the democracy of storytelling", said McCann in a 2013 interview. "I love the fact that our stories can cross all sorts of borders and boundaries."[60]

"The best writers attempt to become alternative historians", McCann said. "My sense of the Great Depression is guided by the works ofDoctorow,for instance. My perception of Dublin in the early 20th century is almost entirely guided by my reading of 'Ulysses.' "[19]

McCann, Christy Kelly, Christopher Cahill andFrank McCourtat New York City's Housing Works bookstore for a tribute to the then-recently deceased Irish poetBenedict Kiely

"I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to be a fiction writer, why not take on something that means something", McCann said in an interview.[61]"In doing this, you must understand that within that epic structure it is the tiny story that is possibly more important."

Barack Obamaquoted McCann in a 2013 town hall in Northern Ireland. “'Peace is indeed harder than war,' the Irish author Colum McCann recently wrote. 'And its constant fragility is part of its beauty. A bullet need happen only once, but for peace to work we need to be reminded of its existence again and again and again.'”

Edna O'BrientoldThe New York Times"By The Book" that she would choose McCann to write her life story.[62]

Pope Francisquoted McCann in the afterword of the May 2022 bookThe Weaving of the World(La Tessitura del Mondo), sharing McCann's words that storytelling is “one of the most powerful means we have for changing our world” and “our great democracy” that we all have access to, which transcends borders, shatters stereotypes and “gives us access to the full flowering of the human heart”.[63]

BonotoldThe New York Times"By The Book" that McCann'sApeirogonwas one of the greatest books he had read recently, saying: "I love timeline transportations. I enjoy tangential views of a core theme. I not only discovered the word 'Apeirogon,' I rediscovered murmuration as a most powerful symbol for the 'times that are a changin' shape."[64]

Personal life[edit]

On 16 June 2009, McCann published aBloomsdayremembrance inThe New York Timesof his long-deceased grandfather, whom he met only once, and of finding him again in the pages ofJames Joyce'sUlysses.McCann wrote: "The man whom I had met only once was becoming flesh and blood through the pages of a fiction."[65]

McCann has written about his father, a journalist as well. In his essay "Looking for the Rozziner", first published inGrantamagazine, McCann said: "It may have stretched towards parody—bygod the man could handle a shovel, just like his old man—but there was something acute about it, the desire to come home, to push the body in a different direction to the mind, the need to be tired alongside him in whatever small way, the emigrant's desire to root around in the old soil. "[66]

Awards and honours[edit]

McCann has been honoured with numerous awards throughout his career, including aPushcart Prize,Rooney Prize,Irish Novel of the Year Awardand the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award, andEsquire Magazinenamed him "Best and Brightest" young novelist in 2003.[67]He is a member ofAosdána,[68]and was inducted into the Hennessy Literary Awards Hall of Fame in 2005, having been named Hennessy New Irish Writer 15 years earlier.[69]

McCann won theNational Book Awardin 2009, forLet The Great World Spin.[70]He was also that year honoured as Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French government.[71]He has also received the Deauville Festival Literary Prize: the Ambassador Award, the inaugural Medici Book Club Prize[72]and was the overall winner of the Grinzane Award in Italy.[73]

McCann has spoken at a variety of notable events, including the 2010Boston CollegeFirst Year Academic Convocation, about his bookLet the Great World Spin.[74][75]

In 2010,Let the Great World Spinwas namedAmazon's "Book of the Year". Additionally, in 2010, McCann received a Guggenheim Fellowship from theJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.He received a literary award from theAmerican Academy of Arts and Lettersin 2011 and became a full member in 2014.[76]15 June 2011 brought the announcement thatLet the Great World Spinhad won the 2011International Dublin Literary Award,one of the more lucrative literary awards in the world.[77][78]Afterwards, McCann lauded fellow nomineesWilliam TrevorandYiyun Li,suggesting that either would have been worthy winners instead.[79]

In 2012, theDublin Institute of Technologygave McCann an honorary degree. In 2013, he received an honorary degree fromQueen's University, Belfast.Transatlanticwas long-listed for the 2013Man Booker Prize.In 2016, he was named a finalist for TheStory PrizeforThirteen Ways of Looking.[50]

On 27 July 2020 he was again long-listed for theMan Booker Prize,this time forApeirogon.[80]

Philanthropy[edit]

Narrative 4[edit]

In June 2012, with Lisa Consiglio and a group of other writers, educators and social activists, McCann co-founded Narrative 4, a global nonprofit, and still serves as board president.[81][82]Narrative 4's mission is to "harness the power of stories to equip and embolden young adults to improve their lives, communities and the world".[83]"It's like a United Nations for young storytellers", McCann said: "The whole idea behind it is that the one true democracy we have is storytelling. It goes across borders, boundaries, genders, rich, poor—everybody has a story to tell."[84]

Following theSandy Hook Elementary School shootingin December 2012, two Newtown High School English teachers wrote to McCann telling him that they believedLet The Great World Spincould help their students work through their grief and trauma.[19]In early 2013, McCann sent the teachers 68 copies of his book and drove up to Newtown to meet with students. From there, Newtown High School engaged in a story exchange with 180 students, as well as an exchange with students from Crane High School on the west side ofChicago.One of the teachers, Lee Keylock (who would go on to run curriculum development for the nonprofit), said that through the story exchange “kids find out they have the same hopes and fears”, no matter where they come from in the world.[85]

McCann views the story exchange, and his writings, as a bastion of hope in a world full of cynicism. He told the Newton High School students that, "You have to beat the cynics at their own game”, and has said that he would go "bare knuckle" to defend the notion of hope.[9][19]

The bedrock of Narrative 4 is the story exchange. In this exercise, groups break off into pairs. In the pairs, each person tells the other person a story about themselves. Then they go back to the larger group and tell the other person's story in the first person, as if it had happened to them. McCann says that people often say they don't have a story to tell about themselves, but that's never the case—he believes everyone has a story to share.[86]A litany of scientific studies have found that the story exchange increases empathy in its participants and encourages "prosocial actions".[87]

Narrative 4 works in schools and communities around the world, encouraging young people to tell stories. McCann has said: "I've always wanted to do something beyond the words on the page. To use the writing to engage more on a ground level."[88]Narrative 4 has offices both in New York and inLimerick,Ireland.[89]

Other Philanthropic Involvements[edit]

Aside from his involvement in Narrative 4, McCann is active in New York and Irish-based charities, in particularPEN,theAmerican Ireland Fund,theNew York Public Library,the Norman Mailer Colony andRoddy Doyle's creative writing centre Fighting Words.

Bibliography[edit]

Novels[edit]

  • Songdogs,Phoenix, 1995.ISBN1897580282
  • This Side of Brightness,Picador, 1998.ISBN0312421974
  • Dancer,Picador Modern Classics, 2003.ISBN9781250051790,OCLC830020868
  • Zoli,Random House, 2006.ISBN1400063728
  • Let the Great World Spin,Random House, 2009.ISBN9781408803226,OCLC893296551
  • TransAtlantic,Random House, 2013.ISBN9781400069590,OCLC852653036
  • Apeirogon,Random House, 2020. ISBN 9781400069606
  • Twist,Random House, expected 2025.[90]

Short fiction[edit]

Collections
Anthologies
  • The Book of Men.Curated by Colum McCann and the editors ofEsquireand Narrative 4 (2013)
Stories[91]

Nonfiction[edit]

Book[edit]

Essay collections[edit]

  • Letters to a Young Writer: Some Practical and Philosophical Advice.Harper Collins, 2017.ISBN9780399590801.[93]

Stories[edit]

References[edit]

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  91. ^Short stories unless otherwise noted.
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  93. ^McCann, Colum (4 April 2017).Letters to a young writer: some practical and philosophical advice(First ed.). New York.ISBN9780399590818.OCLC981760081.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Further reading[edit]

  • Cardin, Bertrand.Colum McCann's Intertexts: Books Talk to one Another.Cork University Press, 2016.[1]
  • Cusatis, John.Understanding Colum McCann.Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011.
  • Dibbell, Jeremy."Colum McCann: LibraryThing Author Interview".Library Thing.Retrieved29 April2014.
  • Flannery, Eoin. "The Aesthetics of Redemption." Irish Academic Press, 2011.
  • Ingersoll, Earl G, and Mary C. Ingersoll.Conversations with Colum McCann.University Press of Mississippi, 2017.
  • Miceli, Barbara. “Peace, Freedom and Cooperation through the Atlantic Crossing in Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic” in Susanna Nanni and Sabrina Vellucci (ed.) Circolazione di Persone e di idee.Integrazione ed esclusione tra Europa e Americhe, Bordighera Press, 2019, pp. 53–68.

External links[edit]