Image by Activedia on Pixabay · Pixabay License
Colum McCann
Sign in to saveIrish writer and journalist
OverviewAI-generated
Colum McCann is a screenwriter, novelist, writer and journalist, born on 28 February 1965 in Dublin. A citizen of the Republic of Ireland and the United States, he was educated at the University of Texas at Austin and has worked for the European Graduate School, Paris Match and Hunter College. He is a member of Aosdána and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was influenced by Jack Kerouac and Don DeLillo.
His notable work is Let the Great World Spin. McCann received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Award, and was nominated for the Booker Prize. He has said, "If you think you know all the secrets, you think you know all the cures."
Synthesized by Vinony from 24 facts across 5 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, Crossref, Wikiquote, Vinony collections. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Works
- 64
Top works
- Les Saisons De La Nuit
- Twist
- When the Birds Stopped Singing
- American Mother
- The Writing Irish of New York
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 101
- Total plays
- 568
<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Colum+McCann">Read more on Last.fm</a>
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- Obesity is associated with macrophage accumulation in adipose tissue
· 2003 · cited 9,923x
- Methods for detecting carcinogens and mutagens with the salmonella/mammalian-microsome mutagenicity test
· 1975 · cited 6,280x
- The B73 Maize Genome: Complexity, Diversity, and Dynamics
· 2009 · cited 3,526x
- Lightness and Retinex Theory
· 1971 · cited 3,284x
- GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs
· 2019 · cited 2,837x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty. Cortlandt. West Street. Fulton. Vesey. It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.”
- “The watchers below pulled in their breath all at once. The air felt suddenly shared. The man above was a word they seemed to know, though they had not heard it before.”
- “Grow up, brother. Pack your bags, go somewhere you matter. They deserve nothing. They're not Magdalenes. You're just a bum among them. You're looking for the poor man within? Why don't you humble yourself at the feet of the rich for once? Or does your God just love useless people?”
- “If you think you know all the secrets, you think you know all the cures.”
- “We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what it really was, what it meant.”
- “You know, when you're young, God sweeps you up. He holds you there. The real snag is to stay there and to know how to fall. All those days when you can't hold on any longer. When you tumble. The test is being able to climb up again.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
Key facts
- Born
- Colum McCann , ( 1965-02-28 ) February 28, 1965 (age 61) , Dublin , Ireland
- Occupation
- Writer
- Language
- English
- Nationality
- Irish , American
- Education
- Journalism
- Alma mater
- Dublin Institute of Technology University of Texas at Austin
- Genre
- Literary fiction
- Literary movement
- Postmodern literature
- Notable works
- Let the Great World Spin ;, Apeirogon , TransAtlantic
- Notable awards
- Rooney Prize Novel of the Year Award National Book Award International Dublin Literary Award
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Dublin
- Occupation
- university teacher
- Employer
- Hunter College
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Notable work
- Let the Great World Spin
- Field of work
- creative writing
- Official website
- www.colummccann.com
- Image
- Colum McCann Speaking2.jpg
Show 8 more facts
- Commons category
- Colum McCann
- date of birth
- 1965-02-28
- member of
- American Academy of Arts and Letters
- influenced by
- Don DeLillo
- floruit
- 2009-01-01
- name in native language
- Colum McCann
- nominated for
- Booker Prize
- has written for
- TheGuardian.com
Sources (6)
via Wikidata · CC0
~23 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Colum McCann (born February 28, 1965) is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and currently resides in New York. Awards he has won include the U.S. National Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, and his work has been published in over 40 languages as well as being published in many American and international publications. He also is the co-founder and president of Narrative 4, an international empathy education nonprofit.
McCann is the author of eight novels, including Apeirogon (2020), TransAtlantic (2013) and the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin (2009). Three collections of short stories have been published, including Thirteen Ways of Looking, released in October 2015. American Mother was released in March 2024 and tells the story of Diane Foley, whose son, James Foley, was captured and killed by ISIS while serving as a freelance combat reporter in Syria. His latest novel, Twist, was released in March 2025.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Colum McCann” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.