McCourt is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish-American author of Angela's Ashes, a memoir of his horrific childhood. He passed away in 2009.

McCourt was born in Brooklyn to Irish immigrants but his parents—unable to find jobs—took the family back to Limerick when McCourt was four. In Ireland, McCourt had a staggeringly miserable childhood that begged for a memoir, with an alcoholic father who eventually abandoned the family, a victimized mother, several siblings who died from malnutrition, and several others he had to support. At 19, he escaped the misery and moved to America. After serving in the Korean War and attending NYU on the GI Bill, he ended up spending 27 years teaching English and writing at McKee Vocational High School in Staten Island, Seward Park High School on the Lower East Side, and Stuyvesant. In 1996, at the ripe old age of 66, McCourt published his first book, Angela's Ashes, about his early life in Ireland.

Angela's Ashes won the Pulitzer prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and just about every other literary prize out there. The film adaptation, starring Emily Watson and directed by Alan Parker, came out in 1999. McCourt continued to publish memoirs about various stages in his life, including 'Tis and Teacher Man, but none had the same staggering success as <em<Ashes.

McCourt was a thrice married man who met his third wife Ellen Frey at the Lion's Head bar in the Village when he reportedly walked in roaring, "Are any of my ex-wives here?" He passed away in 2009 due to complications from melanoma. [Image via Getty]