Colum McCann

Colum McCann

Fellow: Awarded 2010
Field of Study: Fiction

Competition: US & Canada

Hunter College, CUNY

Colum McCann is the author of two collections of short stories and five novels, including the 2009 National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin; McCann is one of the few foreign-born recipients of that prize.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1965, McCann’s novels include This Side of Brightness, Dancer, and Zoli, all of which were all international best-sellers. His fiction has been published in thirty languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Paris Review, Bomb, and other places. He has written for numerous publications including The Irish Times, Die Zeit, La Republicca, Paris Match, The New York Times, the Guardian, and the Independent.

In 2003 Colum was named Esquire magazine’s "Writer of the Year." Other awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, the Hennessy Award for Irish Literature, the Irish Independent Hughes and Hughes/Sunday Independent Novel of the Year 2003, and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award.

His short film Everything in this Country Must, directed by Gary McKendry, was nominated for an Academy Award  in 2005.

In May 2009 Colum was inducted into Aosdana, the equivalent of the Irish Academy, one of Ireland’s highest literary honours, and in 2010 he was awarded a French Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French government, making him one of a small number of foreign artists recognised in France for their literary contributions.

McCann teaches in Hunter College in New York, in the Creative Writing program, with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Nathan Englander. He lives in New York with his wife, Allison, and their three children.

 

National Book, Fiction, 2009
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