Author Of Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt Died

Frank McCourt Dead : Irish American author of "Angela's Ashes" Frank McCourt Died 

Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir "Angela's Ashes" author Frank McCourt died on Sunday June 19, 2009 at the age of 78 at a Manhattan hospice in NY.

The Irish American author had been seriously ill with meningitis and recently was treated for melanoma which is the deadliest form of skin cancer and the cause of his death.

McCourt was the son of Irish immigrants who returned to Ireland with the family during the Depression when he was 4 years old. McCourt had spent three decades teaching English and creative writing in the New York public school system.

He had always encouraged students to write about their own lives and families at elite Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan where he taught for many years.

"Angela's Ashes" rose to No. 1 on the New York Times non- fiction best-seller list and was named best nonfiction book of 1996 by Time and Newsweek. It has sold more than 5 million copies and has been published in 25 languages and in 30 countries. More than 10 million copies of his books have been sold in North America alone, said Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc.

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all,” he wrote. “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.”

Personal Life of McCourt:

McCourt was born in Brooklyn on August 19, 1930 but later his Irish immigrant parents returned home to Ireland because of depression. His family lives in Limerick, one of the juiciest slum areas.

McCourt was the elder than his other seven brothers and sisters. His infant sister had died of unknown causes while the family was still in New York and about a year after they arrived in Ireland, his young twin brothers died of pneumonia six months apart. McCourt himself was admitted to hospital suffering from typhus at the age of 10.

The Angela’s Ashes ended when he immigrated to the US at age of 19 arriving with virtually nothing. "All I had was this story. It took me two years and all my life to write it," he said later. Read McCourt's Biography.