Winner of the 2009 National Book Award for his best-selling novel “Let The Great World Spin”, Colum McCann will appear at Fairfield University for a reading and book-signing as part of University College’s The Inspired Writer: The Distinguished Author Series on Tuesday February 2, 2010 in the Barone Campus Center Oak Room at 7pm. His visit is free and open to the public.

“Let The Great World Spin” (Random House) weaves together a panoramic array of disparate stories and voices: an Irish monk, a hooker in the Bronx, a group of grieving mothers who lost their sons at war, a city judge, an alcoholic and the tightrope walker who obliquely binds them all together.

Inspired by Phillipe Petit’s infamous real-life tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. Let The Great World Spin” opens with this moment of unfathomable risk and beauty and from there spins together the lives of the searching and lonely people scattered below, 110 stories back down on the ground.

McCann is the author of two collections of short stories and five novels including “Dancer” and “Zoli”. In 2003, McCann was named Esquire magazine’s “Writer of the Year” and he is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. His short film “Everything in this Country Must” was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005.

McCann”s fiction has been published in the New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ and he has written for numerous national and international publications. In fall 2009, McCann was awarded a French Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French government.

Born in Dublin, McCann began his career as a journalist with The Irish Press. In the early 1980’s he rode a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. After a year and a half in Japan, he and his wife Alison moved to New York where they currently live with their three children, Isabella, John Michael and Christian.

McCann teaches at Hunter College in New York in the Creative Writing program.

Reservations for the signing are suggested and can be made by calling 203-254-4110.