Who

McCourt is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish-American author of Angela's Ashes, a memoir of his horrific childhood.

Backstory

McCourt was born in Brooklyn to Irish immigrants but his parents—unable to find jobs—took the family back to Limerick when McCourt was four. In Ireland, McCourt had a staggeringly miserable childhood with an alcoholic father who eventually abandoned the family, a victimized mother, several siblings who died from malnutrition, and several others he had to support. (He dropped out of school at 13.) At 19, he escaped the misery and moved to America. After serving in the Korean War and attending NYU on the GI Bill, he ended up spending 27 years teaching English and writing at McKee Vocational High School in Staten Island, Seward Park High School on the Lower East Side, and Stuyvesant. In 1996, at the ripe old age of 66, McCourt published his first book, Angela's Ashes, about his early life in Ireland.

Of note

Angela's Ashes won the Pulitzer prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and just about every other literary prize out there. The film adaptation, starring Emily Watson and directed by Alan Parker, came out in 1999 (McCourt himself provided some voiceover narration). Also in 1999, McCourt published 'Tis, a memoir of his first years in America. He published another memoir, Teacher Man, in 2006, about—you guessed it—his time working as a teacher. His most recent book is Angela and the Baby Jesus, an illustrated Christmas story based on one his mother told him as a child. McCourt has said: "It is beyond the capacity of any screenwriter or novelist to imagine what has happened to me in my 60s. So I'm the beacon of hope for the whole Social Security set."

Personal

McCourt's third wife is Ellen Frey, who's 24 years his junior. They met at the Lion's Head bar in the Village when he reportedly walked in roaring, "Are any of my ex-wives here?" He has a daughter, Maggie, from his first marriage. McCourt has an apartment on the Upper West Side and a house in Roxbury, Conn.

No joke

As a teacher at Stuyvesant, one his students was actress Lucy Liu.