McCourt giving a reading at Housing Works bookstore in New York City in 2007.

According to his brother Malachy McCourt, celebrated author Frank McCourt is suffering from meningitis and has as little as a couple of weeks or less to live.  He has been admitted to a New York hospital. Earlier this year McCourt was diagnosed with melanoma.

UPDATE 7/19:  Frank McCourt has died.

“He’s not too good at the moment,” said Malachy, an actor, author and politician who ran for Governor of New York in 2006. “He was doing fine, but he got meningitis two weeks ago and it turned the whole thing topsy-turvy.”

The 78-year-old McCourt was 66 when in 1996 he debuted his memoir Angela’s Ashes, which detailed his growing up poor and adolescence in Limerick, Ireland.  McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930, but his family returned to Ireland in 1934.

The photo above, taken with a very cheap camera, is one in a series I did of McCourt for Wikipedia in 2007 at the Housing Works bookstore.  I would later photograph his brother Malachy for Wikipedia at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which was an inspiring and interesting experience.

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