Colum McCann

The National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin recently spoke with the PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown about his latest novel, TransAtlantic, which features a fictional braiding of the narratives of Frederick Douglass traveling through Ireland in 1845, the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic in 1919, and Senator George Mitchell in 1998 trying to forge a peace treaty in Northern Ireland. (Check out Brown's retake at the beginning of the clip.)