Colum McCann, the award-winning author of six novels and three short story collections, makes a return visit to Literary Sojourn as the 2018 Master of Ceremonies. McCann’s most recent collection, Thirteen Ways of Looking, won a Pushcart Prize and was selected among the Best American Short Stories 2015. His novel TransAtlantic was an international bestseller that Kirkus called, “A masterful and profoundly moving novel that employs exquisite language to explore the limits of language and the tricks of memory . . . epic in ambition . . . audacious in format.” Let the Great World Spin won the National Book Award in the U.S, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, the International Impac Award, a literary award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and several other major international literary prizes. In Letters to a Young Writer, McCann offers up 52 pithy essays that are ultimately a profound challenge to writers to bring truth and light to a dark world through their art. McCann is considered, in every sense, an international artist. He is a member of the Irish Academy, Aosdana, and was awarded a rare Chevalier des arts et lettres by the French government. His topics have ranged from homeless people in the subway tunnels of New York, to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, to the effects of 9/11, to a poetic examination of the life and culture of the Roma in Europe. He is the co-founder of the nonprofit global story exchange organization, Narrative 4.
