Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt dies

BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Frank McCourt, who won a Pulitzer

Prize for "Angela's Ashes"--a memoir of his grim childhood in an Irish slum,

died Sunday of cancer at age 78.

McCourt had been gravely ill with meningitis and was being treated for skin

cancer, his brother Malachy said. The Irish-American writer breathed his last at

a hospice in NYC.

The Brooklyn-born son of Irish immigrants spent three decades teaching

English and creative writing in the New York public school system.

McCourt wrote his best-selling Angela's Ashes in his 60s. The

book detailed his grim and poverty-stricken childhood in Limerick

Ireland.

(Agencies)