Colum McCann is the inter­na­tion­al­ly best­selling author of the nov­els TransAt­lantic, Let the Great World Spin, Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Bright­ness, and Song­dogs, as well as three crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed sto­ry col­lec­tions and the non­fic­tion book Let­ters to a Young Writer. His fic­tion has been pub­lished in over forty lan­guages. He has received many inter­na­tion­al hon­ors, includ­ing the Nation­al Book Award, the Inter­na­tion­al IMPAC Dublin Lit­er­ary Award, a Guggen­heim fel­low­ship, the Push­cart Prize, and an Oscar nom­i­na­tion for his short film Every­thing in This Coun­try Must. He is a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Let­ters, as well as the Irish asso­ci­a­tion of artists Aos­dá­na, and he has also received a Cheva­lier des Artes et des Let­tres award from the French gov­ern­ment. In addi­tion, he has won awards in Italy, Ger­many, and Chi­na. A con­trib­u­tor to The New York­er, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review, he teach­es in the Hunter Col­lege MFA Cre­ative Writ­ing pro­gram. He lives with his fam­i­ly in New York City, where he is the cofounder of the glob­al non­prof­it sto­ry exchange orga­ni­za­tion Nar­ra­tive 4.