Sez I to Myself

A treasure chest of never-before-collected essays from Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize–winning memoirist, and his boisterous brother Malachy, publishing on the 30th anniversary of Angela’s Ashes, with a foreword by Colum McCann

In 1996, a retired New York City high school English teacher published a memoir that took the publishing world by storm. Angela’s Ashes, the story of Frank McCourt’s childhood in Ireland, was a bold account of poverty and family tragedy, suffused with humor and compassion. It went on to sell over ten million copies and won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award.

Frank McCourt was suddenly an internationally celebrated memoirist, a writer who had invigorated the genre. But most readers didn’t know that Angela’s Ashes wasn’t Frank’s first published writing.

For years, he and his actor brother Malachy contributed a column to a neighborhood newspaper called The West Side Spirit. Malachy, himself a bestselling writer, also contributed to Our Town, Irish America, and The Southampton Review. And Frank went on to write for prominent publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, Life, and Rolling Stone. 

Sez I to Myself collects the best of those essays and works of journalism. Here the brothers McCourt tackle parades and pubs, classrooms and churches, the immigrant experience, loss, 9/11, the writing life, and more. This is a charming, tender, and insightful collection, a welcome new book from two masterful and much-loved writers.