Frank McCourt dead at 78

McCourt, who was recently treated for melanoma and then became gravely ill with meningitis, died at a hospice in New York City, his brother Malachy told the Associated Press.

Although McCourt spent his summers working on a novel drawing on his youth in Ireland, he was unable to find his own voice until he retired from teaching. After years of teaching creative writing to young people, McCourt determined to write his own life story. Angela's Ashes sold over 4 million copies, has been published in 27 countries and has been translated into 17 languages. It won McCourt the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the ABBY Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.