Post by Police Moderator on Jul 20, 2009 3:06:30 GMT -5
Frank McCourt dies at 78; late-blooming author of 'Angela's Ashes'
The Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his grim childhood in an Irish slum was written after he retired as a New York City schoolteacher.
By Dennis McLellan
July 20, 2009
The Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his grim childhood in an Irish slum was written after he retired as a New York City schoolteacher.
By Dennis McLellan
July 20, 2009
Frank McCourt, the retired New York City schoolteacher who launched his late-in-life literary career by tapping memories of his grim, poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland to write the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir "Angela's Ashes," died Sunday of cancer. He was 78.
McCourt, who was recently treated for melanoma and then became gravely ill with meningitis, died at a hospice in New York City, his brother Malachy told the Associated Press.
"I'm a late bloomer," a 66-year-old McCourt told the New York Times shortly after publication of "Angela's Ashes" in 1996.
McCourt, the Brooklyn-born son of Irish immigrants who returned to Ireland with the family during the Depression when he was 4 years old, had spent three decades teaching English and creative writing in the New York public school system.
