Brooklyn Bookbeat: Acclaimed writer previews latest novel at St. Francis College
Award-winning writer Colum McCann (“Let the Great World Spin,” “Zoli”) will offer a preview of his forthcoming novel “Transatlantic” as the next author to speak for the Walt Whitman Writers Series on Wednesday, April 17 at 4:30pm in St. Francis College’s Maroney Forum for Arts, Culture & Education.
The Walt Whitman Series is a continuation of St. Francis College’s commitment to supporting Brooklyn’s literary community. In addition to visits by these authors, the College also offers the biennial $50,000 St. Francis College Literary Prize (entries due May 1) and helps sponsor and host events for the Brooklyn Book Festival; giving students, faculty and the entire Brooklyn community a front row seat to some of the best and most diverse professional writers at work today.
Transatlantic explores the links between three important trips from America to Ireland spread across 150 years. In 1845 black American slave Frederick Douglass lands in Ireland to champion ideas of democracy and freedom, only to find a famine unfurling at his feet. In 1919, two brave young airmen, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, emerge from the carnage of World War One to pilot the very first transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to the west of Ireland. And in 1998 American senator George Mitchell crisscrosses the ocean in search of a lasting Irish peace.