FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 1999
Contact: Trish Brink (860) 439-2508 [email protected]
Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of Angela's Ashes To Keynote 81st Commencement At Connecticut College May 29
NEW LONDON -- Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes, will be the keynote speaker for the 81st commencement ceremonies at Connecticut College Saturday, May 29, beginning at 10 a.m.
McCourt's memoir traces his years being raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all," he begins in his book. "It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."
Born in Brooklyn in 1930, McCourt's family returned to Ireland hoping for a better life. Angela's Ashes was named for his mother who struggled with four boys and had no money to feed the children. McCourt's father, Malachy, rarely worked, and when he did, he drank his wages away. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling -- did nurture in his son an appetite for one thing he could provide: a story.
Angela's Ashes won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1997, the 1996 Anne Rea Jewell Non-fiction Prize and the 1996 Salon Book Award. It was named as one of the top books of 1996 by The New York Times Book Review, Time and other national publications.
McCourt taught in New York City public schools for 27 years, the last 17 of which were spent at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. After retiring from teaching, he and his brother, Malachy, performed their two-man show, A Couple of Blaguards, a musical review about their Irish youth. In September 1996, Schribner published his childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, which has been at the top of The New York Times bestseller list ever since (115 weeks as of 3/7/99).
McCourt is currently working on a sequel to Angela's Ashes, which is tentatively scheduled for publication next Fall.
McCourt lives in new York City with his wife, Ellen.
Media Availabilty is Scheduled for Saturday, May 29, at 8:30 a.m.
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