A Conversation with Colum McCann

Join the Kenan Institute for Ethics on November 9, 2020 at 6:15pm for a conversation on love, grief, and belonging with Colum McCann, international best-selling and award-winning author of Apeirogon, TransAtlantic, and Let the Great World Spin.

Irish-born McCann is the author of seven novels, three collections of short stories, and countless pieces for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, GQ, The New York Times, The Irish Times, The Guardian, and The Independent, among others, where he moves seamlessly from the Troubles in Ireland to the Romani camps of Eastern Europe to the dizzying heights of the World Trade Center. In his most recent novel, Apeirogon, longlisted for a Man Booker Prize, he stitches together historical and fictional material to create a story of two fathers who have lost their daughters due to conflict in the Holy LandApeirogon ranges over vast time and geography as the fathers’ extraordinary story reverberates across the world.

McCann is visiting as part of the FOCUS Program’s Ethics, Leadership, and Global Citizenship cluster. Students in the four seminars that comprise the cluster read Apeirogon this term as a common text and grappled with some of the questions confronting countries, companies, and individuals in a global world. Drawing upon insights from ethics, philosophy, history, sociology and public policy, students explore together what it means to be a global citizen and ethical leader in the twenty-first century, and what rights and obligations come with global citizenship.

Register for the event.