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Colum McCann

Biography

Colum McCann

Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels TRANSATLANTIC, LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN, ZOLI, DANCER, THIS SIDE OF BRIGHTNESS and SONGDOGS, as well as three critically acclaimed story collections and the nonfiction book LETTERS TO A YOUNG WRITER.

His fiction has been published in over 40 languages. He has received many international honors, including the National Book Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and an Oscar nomination for his short film Everything in This Country Must.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Irish association of artists Aosdána, and he has also received a Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres award from the French government. In addition, he has won awards in Italy, Germany and China.

A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Paris Review, he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing program.

He lives with his family in New York City, where he is the cofounder of the global nonprofit story exchange organization Narrative 4.

Colum McCann

Books by Colum McCann

by Colum McCann - Fiction

Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their lives --- from the roads they are allowed to drive on, to the schools their children attend, to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate. But their lives, however circumscribed, are upended one after the other: first, Rami’s 13-year-old daughter, Smadar, becomes the victim of suicide bombers; a decade later, Bassam’s 10-year-old daughter, Abir, is killed by a rubber bullet. Rami and Bassam had been raised to hate one another. And yet, when they learn of each other’s stories, they recognize the loss that connects them. Together they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace --- and, with their one small act, start to permeate what has for generations seemed an impermeable conflict.

by Colum McCann - Fiction, Short Stories

Colum McCann’s latest consists of a novella and three short stories. In the title piece, mystery surrounds the death of a retired 82-year-old New York Supreme Court justice. The other stories involve a writer struggling to compose a story for a New Year’s edition of a magazine, a mother in Galway whose 13-year-old adopted son has disappeared, and an elderly nun who discovers that the man who kidnapped her 37 years earlier is now a diplomat.

by Colum McCann - Fiction

Three iconic crossings are connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history. Beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan, who crosses paths with Frederick Douglass, TRANSATLANTIC follows her daughter and granddaughter, and culminates in the present-day story of Hannah Carson, in whom all the hopes and failures of previous generations live on.