February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
As well as the honor and accolades, the award comes with cash prize of $10,000.
Tributes quickly poured in for a writer who has for many years made New York his home. Irish arts minister, Martin Cullen, said the award was recognition of McCann’s immense talent.
“The Irish imagination is one of our greatest assets and the individual creative success of modern Irish writers like Colum McCann continues to make an enormous contribution to cultural life, both at home and abroad,” Cullen said. “The global cultural profile of Irish artists past and present, indelibly associates Ireland with world-class achievement in creativity and the arts,” he added.
The New York Times described McCann’s novel, published by Random House, as featuring “a sprawling cast of characters in 1970s New York City whose lives are ineluctably touched by the mysterious tight rope walker who traverses a wire suspended between the Twin Towers one morning.”
McCann lives in Manhattan with his wife and three children.