Conversations with Colum McCann brings together eighteen interviews with a world-renowned fiction writer. Ranging from his 1994 literary debut, Fishing the Sloe-Black River, to a new and unpublished interview conducted in 2016, these interviews represent the development as well as the continuation of McCann's interests. The number and length of the later conversations attest to his star-power. Let the Great World Spin earned him the National Book Award and promises to become a major motion picture. His most recent novel, TransAtlantic, has awed readers with its dynamic yoking of the 1845-46 visit of Frederick Douglass to Ireland, the 1919 first nonstop transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown, and Senator George Mitchell's 1998 efforts to achieve a peace accord inNorthern Ireland. An extensive interview by scholar Cecile Maudet is included here, as is an interview by John Cusatis, who wrote Understanding Colum McCann, the first extensive critical analysisof McCann's work. An author who actually enjoys talking about his work, McCann (b. 1965) offers insights into his method of writing, what he hopes to achieve, as well the challenge of writing each novel to go beyond his accomplishments in the novel before. Readers will note how many of his responses include stories in which hehimself is the object of the humor and how often his remarks reveal insights into his character as a man who sees the grittiness of the urban landscape but never loses faith in the strength of ordinary people and their capacity to prevail.

Conversations with Colum McCann brings together eighteen interviews with a world-renowned fiction writer. Ranging from his 1994 literary debut, Fishing the Sloe-Black River, to a previously unpublished interview conducted in 2016, these interviews represent the development as well as the continuation of McCann's interests. The number and length of the later conversations attest to his star-power. Let the Great World Spin earned him the National Book Award and promises to become a major motion picture. His most recent novel, TransAtlantic, has awed readers with its dynamic yoking of the 1845-46 visit of Frederick Douglass to Ireland, the 1919 first nonstop transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown, and Senator George Mitchell's 1998 efforts to achieve a peace accord in Northern Ireland. An extensive interview by scholar Cecile Maudet is included here, as is an interview by John Cusatis, who wrote Understanding Colum McCann, the first extensive critical analysis of McCann's work. An author who actually enjoys talking about his work, McCann (b. 1965) offers insights into his method of writing, what he hopes to achieve, as well as the challenge of writing each novel to go beyond his accomplishments in the novel before. Readers will note how many of his responses include stories in which he himself is the object of the humor and how often his remarks reveal insights into his character as a man who sees the grittiness of the urban landscape but never loses faith in the strength of ordinary people and their capacity to prevail.

Although he did not start publishing until middle age, Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) had over sixty published books to his credit by the time of his death. One of them, the short novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), was to bring him fame and notoriety outside England following the 1971 release of Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation. The prominence of that single novel would impel its author to confront a public continually asking directly or by implication: What else have you written, Mr. Burgess? Burgess produced scores of novels, biographies, books of literary criticism, film scripts, and news articles. A linguist and polyglot who was fluent in eight languages, he invented the language used in the 1981 film Quest for Fire. He translated and adapted Bizet's Carmen, Weber's Oberon, and other operas for the English stage. His ReJoyce: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader remains a standard in Joycean criticism. Conversations with Anthony Burgess captures, through in-depth interviews, a writer of tremendous energy, inventiveness, and self-discipline. The collection brings together interviews from 1971 to 1989, including two pieces published for the first time. Earl G. Ingersoll is distinguished professor emeritus of English at SUNY College at Brockport. He has written, edited, and coedited many books, including Conversations with May Sarton and Conversations with Rita Dove, both from University Press of Mississippi. Mary C. Ingersoll is a retired elementary school teacher who specialized in teaching humanities to gifted students.