Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release
October 16, 2000

"Angelašs Ashes" Author Frank McCourt Speaks at Lawrence University
Convocation


     APPLETON, WIS. -- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt,
whose memoir of his impoverished childhood in Ireland became the runaway
best seller "Angela's Ashes," shares the story of his life with his
unique blend of dry Irish humor and pathos Thursday, Oct. 26 in a
Lawrence University convocation.
     McCourt presents 'A Memoir of a Memoir" at 11:10 a.m. in the
Lawrence Memorial Chapel.  He also will conduct a question-and-answer
session at 2 p.m. in Riverview Lounge of the Lawrence Memorial Union.
Both events are free and open to the public.
     Although born in Brooklyn to Irish immigrants, McCourt was raised
in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, the son of an alcoholic father and a
desperately inadequate mother.  Growing up in the 1930s and '40s, he
endured abject poverty, deparavity, humiliation and the deaths of three
siblings who fell victim to disease and malnutrition.
     Surviving his hardscrabble upbringing, McCourt returned to the U.S.
in 1949 at the age of 19 and spent several years as a soldier and
working at New York City dockyards.  Although he didn't have a high
school diploma, he persuaded New York University to enroll him as a
student.
     McCourt eventually became a teacher and spent 27 years teaching
English in New York City public schools, including the last 17 of his
career at Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School. Although he had written
some essays in college about his experiences in Ireland as a youth, he
generally avoided the subject because of its depressing nature.  In
1966, he began a memoir of his youth, but quit after writing 150 pages. 
     Nearly 30 years later and now retired from teaching, McCourt
revisited his old memoir.  In 1996, the memoir was published as
"Angela's Ashes" and became an international best seller, spending 117
weeks on the The New York Times best-seller list.  With more than four
million copies in print, the book has undergone 65 printings in 22
languages.
     "Angela's Ashes" earned McCourt the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for
Biography, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times
Book Award, the ABBY Award and was named the best nonfiction book of
1996 by both Time and Newsweek magazines.  McCourt's memoir was made
into a movie of the same name and released last November.  
     In 1999, McCourt released "Tis: A Memoir," his sequel to "Angela's
Ashes," which continues his life story beginning with his teenage
immigration to
America.
     In addition to his two memoirs, McCourt also has written a pair of
musical revues.  "A Couple of Blaguards" is a two-man show he performs
with his younger brother, Malachy, based on their Irish youth, and more
recently, "The Irish... And How They Got That Way."  McCourt currently
makes his home in Connecticut with his wife, Ellen.