Author Frank McCourt gravely ill, says brother

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Angela's Ashes" author Frank McCourt is gravely ill with meningitis brought on by melanoma skin cancer, his brother said on Thursday.

Malachy McCourt said his brother, 78, is in a New York hospice and was diagnosed with meningitis about two weeks ago.

"We don't expect him to live very long," Malachy McCourt told Reuters. "He got meningitis and that screwed up the whole thing. (Until then) he was doing okay, speaking and lecturing and appearing and signing and doing all the usual stuff."

"He was one of the unfortunate ones. Only 3 to 5 percent of people who have melanoma get this form of meningitis," he said. "He's still conscious, but his hearing has gone and his eyesight is going. He's speaking less."

Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1996 memoir "Angela's Ashes" tells of the poverty, hunger and alcoholism endemic in the slums in Limerick, Ireland, where he grew up.

Millions of copies of the book sold around the world and it was adapted into a 1999 Hollywood movie.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, Editing by Sandra Maler)