Colum McCann

Even if it might not look like it: "I invented a desk where I actually sit in a cupboard," he says. "I lock myself in and then it becomes a different world. Yeah I'm very boring really: I live on the Upper East Side, a block from the park. I have three kids. I go for a jog around the park every day with my dog."

He also teaches creative writing at Hunter College, where he likes to welcome each year's intake by telling them he can't teach them anything. "I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page."

I tell him that my favourite line in the novel begins the Emily section: "Stories began for her as a lump in the throat," and McCann repeats the line out loud, reflective and pleased. "Yeah that was probably my most written paragraph about the act of writing. I think part of it is you have this thing inside you that you have to confront and you don't really know what it is. When finally I felt it came to me, it was a huge release and then that lump in the throat was gone."

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He is referring to Narrative 4, a global charity he has co-founded, dedicated to creating social change through storytelling. "So let's say it's kids from Limerick and kids from Chicago. They'll pair up and then they'll tell each other their story. And then they'll come back into a group and tell that story. But the real beautiful kicker is, you have to tell the other person's story. It's about developing empathy."

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/may/25/colum-mccann-life-in-writing