Frank mccourt brief biography

Biography of Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt was an American writer and Pulitzer Prize winner. He was born on August 19, 1931, in Brooklyn, New York, as the first child of seven in an Irish family. During the Great Depression, his parents struggled to find work, eventually forcing the family to return to their native Ireland, to the city of Limerick. However, the McCourts continued to live in poverty, and three of their children died from starvation. Frank's father, who was unemployed, worsened the family's situation by spending whatever little money he earned on alcohol.

When Frank turned eleven, his father left for work, sending very little money to support the family, and eventually disappeared altogether, leaving them to fend for themselves. At the age of thirteen, Frank dropped out of school and had to find work to provide for his family, engaging in both honest and dishonest jobs. At nineteen, he left for the United States in search of better opportunities, only to be drafted into the US Army to serve in the Korean War.

After returning from the war, Frank McCourt pursued his education, successfully convincing the university to admit him without a high school diploma. He later became a teacher and spent 27 years instructing creative writing. His teaching approach was to instill in his students the significance of their own lives, which children often perceive as insignificant. It was his students who encouraged him to write a novel and read it in class. Since then, every summer he would write novels for his students, though he was not yet ready to publish them widely.

It was only after retiring that Frank McCourt published his first novel about his life, titled "Angela's Ashes." The book was published in 27 countries, translated into 17 languages, and sold over 4 million copies. In the book, he vividly described his own life and the conditions in which his siblings lived, including their perpetually damp home infested with rats and other pests. Despite the horrors he experienced as a child, Frank McCourt wrote his bestseller with humor and even thanked his wayward father for instilling in him a love for language and literature from an early age. "Angela's Ashes" earned him the Pulitzer Prize, and the film adaptation won an Academy Award.

All of his subsequent books, including "Teacher," "Angela's Ashes," and " 'Tis," continued to describe his difficult life and became bestsellers worldwide. On July 19, 2009, Frank McCourt passed away at the age of 78 after a lengthy illness, having battled skin cancer and meningitis. He died exactly one month before his birthday.