About this item

From the bestselling author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin comes the perfect graduation gift: a lesson in how to be a writer, and so much more. Intriguing and inspirational, this book is a call to look outward rather than inward. McCann asks his readers to constantly push the boundaries of experience, to see empathy and wonder in the stories we craft and hear. A paean to the power of language, both by argument and by example, Letters to a Young Writer is fierce and honest in its testament to the bruises delivered by writing as both a profession and a calling. It charges aspiring writers to learn the rules and even break them. These fifty-two essays are ultimately a profound challenge to a new generation to bring truth and light to a dark world through their art. Praise for the fiction of Colum McCann Let the Great World Spin Winner of the National Book Award "One of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years." - Jonathan Mahler, The New York Times Book Review "There's so much passion and humor and pure life force on every page that you'll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed." - Dave Eggers TransAtlantic Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award "Reminiscent of the finest work of Michael Ondaatje and Michael Cunningham." - O: The Oprah Magazine "Another sweeping, beautifully constructed tapestry of life . . . Reading McCann is a rare joy." - The Seattle Times Thirteen Ways of Looking A New York Times Notable Book of the Year "The irreducible mystery of human experience ties this small collection together, and in each of these stories McCann explores that theme in strikingly effective ways." - The Washington Post "Extraordinary . . . incandescent." - Chicago Tribune



About the Author

Colum McCann

Sign up for Colum's newsletter: Colum McCann is the author of three collections of short stories and six novels, including "Apeirogon," due to be published in Spring 2020. His other books include "TransAtlantic," "Let the Great World Spin," "This Side of Brightness,""Dancer" and "Zoli," all of which were international best-sellers. "Let the Great World Spin" won the National Book Award in 2009. His fiction has been published in over 40 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Paris Review and other places. He has written for numerous publications including The Irish Times, Die Zeit, La Republicca, Paris Match, The New York Times, the Guardian and the Independent. Colum has won numerous international awards and has been a bestseller on four continents. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Irish association of artists, Aosdana. He has also received a Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres from the French government. He is the cofounder of the global non-profit story exchange organisation Narrative 4. In 2003 Colum was named Esquire magazine's "Writer of the Year. " Other awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, the Irish Independent Hughes and Hughes/Sunday Independent Novel of the Year 2003, and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He was recently inducted into the Hennessy Hall of Fame for Irish Literature. His short film "Everything in this Country Must," directed by Gary McKendry, was nominated for an Academy Award Oscar in 2005. Colum was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a journalist in The Irish Press. In the early 1980's he took a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. After a year and a half in Japan, he and his wife Allison moved to New York where they currently live with their three children, Isabella, John Michael and Christian. Colum teaches in Hunter College in New York, in the Creative Writing program, with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Tea Obreht. Colum has completed his new novel, "Apeirogon." Crafted out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material, McCann tells the story of Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan. One is Israeli. One is Palestinian. Both are fathers. Both have lost their daughters to the conflict. When Bassam and Rami learn of each other's stories they recognize the loss that connects them, and they begin to use their grief as a weapon for peace. In the novel McCann crosses centuries and continents. He stitches together time, art, history, nature and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Musical, cinematic, muscular, delicate and soaring, Apeirogon is a novel for our times.It is scheduled for release in the U.S in February 2020. Advance copies will be available he



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