Frank McCourt

Born in Brooklyn of Irish parents, Frank McCourt grew up in his mother's native Limerick to which his family returned in 1934. Their abject poverty forced him to leave school at the age of 13 in order to find work to pay for his, his mother's and his brothers' living. At the age of 19, McCourt left Limerick for New York where he graduated with a Master's degree in English in 1958. For thirty years, he worked as a teacher before turning to write down his life's story. Angela's Ashes, his memoir dealing with his childhood and adolescence in Ireland, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1996 and the Pulitzer Prize the following year. It has become a wordlwide bestseller and was adapted for cinema in 1999. That same year, McCourt's second memoir, 'Tis, was published. In it, he covers his years as a new immigrant in America. A third memoir, Teacher Man, appeared in 2005. Frank MCourt lives in New York.