Irish · b. 1965
Colum McCann won the 2009 National Book Award for "Let the Great World Spin," which braids stories around Philippe Petit's World Trade Center wire walk. His novels connect disparate lives across history and geography—Irish famine to Israeli-Palestinian conflict in "Apeirogon." McCann co-founded Narrative 4, using storytelling for empathy building. His prose finds beauty in human connection across seemingly unbridgeable divides.