Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt was born to an impoverished Irish family living in New York City in the Great Depression. He and his family then moved back to Ireland when McCourt was nine, and he lived there for the next ten years—his first novel, Angela’s Ashes, details his early life in both America and Ireland. Several of his siblings died at an early age, and Frank was forced to work hard as a young boy to support those who remained alive. At the age of nineteen, McCourt moved back to New York, and in 1951, he volunteered to fight in the Korean War. He was able to attend New York University on the GI Bill, and graduated with an undergraduate degree in English. Afterwards, he began a long career teaching in New York public schools. In 1996, he succeeded in publishing the memoir he’d been working on for years, Angela’s Ashes. The book was a surprise bestseller, and won McCourt the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Afterwards, McCourt published two other memoirs, ‘Tis (1999) and Teacher Man (2005). He died of cancer in 2009.