Dubai: Frank McCourt, best-selling author of Angela's Ashes, joked that it is difficult to find a "decent slum" today in Limerick, Ireland, where he grew up.
"It has become a boom town like Dubai," he said, "with cranes all over the place and people putting on weight."
Speaking to a packed audience at the UAE's first literature festival, McCourt recounted how he took up writing at age of 64.
"Don't give up," he advised budding writers, who "despair" at the age of 29.
The author said writing about his childhood and his suffering mother was not cathartic.
"I had never realised the absolute wretchedness of her life," he said.
Angela's Ashes created controversy in Ireland but went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
The author recounted that whatever someone writes, people in America say: "So, when's the movie?"
And then he recounted how he was feted by Hollywood, with producers sending a plane to fly him into Los Angeles.
"It was just me and two pilots," he said, joking that he had become accustomed to being a celebrity.
Before writing Angela's Ashes, Brooklyn-born McCourt was an English teacher. After reading from his book Teacher Man, the author wondered out loud how he had survived 13 years teaching in a New York public school.
Asked for advice from a teacher in the audience, McCourt said: "Find something you enjoy doing [and the dollars will follow]".
When another member of the audience asked him what he should do to wean his children off video games, McCourt said: "We have to fight the fight."
