Colum McCann to Star in Documentary

At a standing-room only McNally Jackson Books event last night in New York City, National Book Award winner Colum McCann read an excerpt from his Granta 109 essay about his father’s career as a newspaper editor.

As McCann read to the reverent audience, a documentary crew filmed the entire event–collecting footage for an Irish television documentary about the novelist. After the reading, GalleyCat caught up with the documentary director, Charlie McCarthy from Icebox Films.

The company also produced a documentary about the poet, Seamus Heaney. “We hope to finish by the end of spring, hopefully,” he told GalleyCat. “It’s about New York City and Colum–looking at the city through his eyes. We’ve been following him for ten days.”

We also cut our own mini-documentary about the evening, as McCann explored his relationship with his father and talked about how he conceived the Granta essay.

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