Writer and teacher, born in Brooklyn, New York City, USA. His family returned to their native Ireland when he was four, and settled in Limerick. His best-selling memoir, Angela's Ashes (1996), chronicles the bitter years of an impoverished childhood up until he left Ireland in 1949. The work won him the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. A sequel, Tis: A Memoir (1999), charts his return to the USA, where he struggles through poverty and lack of education to gain a place at New York University. A further memoir, Teacher Man (2005), relates his experiences as a teacher in New York.
He was born in New York City and grew up in Limerick, Ireland. At the age of 19 he returned to the United States and earned a degree from New York University. After receiving a masters degree from Brooklyn College in 1958, he taught English at McKee High School and Stuyvesant High School in New York City.He received the Pulitzer Prize (1997) and National Book Critics Circle Award (1996) for his memoir Angela's Ashes (1996), which details his childhood as a poor Irish Catholic in Limerick. He is also the author of 'Tis (1999), which continues the narrative of his life, picking up from the end of the previous book and focusing on life as a new immigrant in America. His works are often part of the syllabus in high schools.
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