Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt taught in the New York City public schools for twenty-seven years, the last seventeen of which were spent at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. After retiring from teaching, Frank and his brother, Malachy, performed their two-man show, A Couple of Blaguards, a musical review about their Irish Youth. In September 1996, Scribner published Frank's childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, which spent 117 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. After more than sixty-five printings, there are over 2,325,000 copies in print in North America alone. The book is available in eighteen countries. Frank McCourt was the winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award in Biography/Autobiography, The Boston Book Review's Non- Fiction prize, the ABBY Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Time Magazine and Newsweek chose Angela's Ashes as the best nonfiction book of 1996. The hardcover of Angela's Ashes spent 23 weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The Alan Parker film of Angela's Ashes, starring Emily Watson, was released to wide acclaim in 1999.