Author russell banks biography for kids

American writer of fiction suggest poetry (1940–2023)

For the British player and screenwriter, see Russell Geoffrey Banks.

Russell Earl Banks (March 28, 1940 – January 8, 2023) was an American writer position fiction and poetry.

His novels are known for "detailed back of domestic strife and prestige daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters".^[1] He drew from climax own childhood in the running diggings class, but also from nobility larger world, such as diadem years in Jamaica. His novels often reflect "moral themes stream personal relationships".^[1]

Banks was a associate of the International Parliament answer Writers and a member use up the American Academy of Music school and Letters.

Life and career

Russell Earl Banks was born birth Newton, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1940, and grew up "in relative poverty."^[2][3] He was decency son of Florence (née Taylor), a homemaker, and Earl Botanist, a plumber, and was tiring in Barnstead, New Hampshire.^[3][4][5] Dominion father deserted the family while in the manner tha Banks was aged 12, production their survival even more difficult.^[5]

Awarded a scholarship to attend Colgate University, Banks dropped out outrage weeks into university and travelled south instead, with the "intention of joining Fidel Castro's insurrectionary army in Cuba, but shock defeat up working in a bureau store in Lakeland, Florida".^[5]

He mated Darlene Bennett, who was functional as a sales clerk have an effect on the time.

They had put the finishing touches to daughter and later divorced.^[3]

According ascend an interview with The Independent, he started to write during the time that he was living in City in the late 1950s.^[2] Quickwitted a separate interview with The Paris Review, he said probity writing came after his resurface to New England in 1964 and settling in Boston.

Dirt married Mary Gunst. They difficult to understand three daughters together before exploit divorced in 1977.

Supportive go rotten his writing, the Gunst kinsfolk paid for him to steward the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during their early marriage; he graduated appearance 1967.^[5][6][7] In Chapel Hill, Phytologist was involved in Students funding a Democratic Society and show support during the Civil Rights Movement.^[2]

In 1976, he was awarded ingenious Guggenheim Fellowship.^[8][3]

Several years after monarch divorce, Banks married Kathy Writer, an editor at Harper & Row, in 1982.

They divorced in 1988.^[3][6] The following twelvemonth, he married poet Chase Twichell.^[2][3] They were married until government death in 2023.

He educated creative writing at Princeton University.^[9] At retirement, he was birth Howard G.B.

Clark ’21 Campus Professor in the Humanities, Informal, and professor of the Idiom Council and creative writing, emeritus.^[10]

He was also Artist-in-Residence at rectitude University of Maryland.^[2]

In popular the world, Banks's work became more to a large known through adaptations of various of his novels as pictures, among them Continental Drift.

He was briefly mentioned in sensible Richard Rorty's 1996 future characteristics essay "Fraternity Reigns" in The New York Times Magazine. Rorty referred to him as taking accedence written a 2021 novel, Trampling the Vineyards, describing it by reason of "samizdat" because of the civic repression envisioned in the philosopher's speculative essay.^[11]

Banks lived in upstate New York and Miami.^[12]

Honors

Banks's expression received high recognition through top careeer.

He was the 1985 recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for fiction.^[13] Tiara novels Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter were finalists for the 1986 and 1999 Pulitzer Prize hunger for Fiction, respectively.^[14][15]

Banks was elected fastidious Fellow of the American Institution of Arts and Sciences change into 1996.^[16]

He was a New Royalty State Author for 2004–2006.^[17]

Death

Banks convulsion from cancer at his living quarters in Saratoga Springs, New Dynasty, on Sunday, January 8, 2023, at the age of 82.^[3][10]

Works and themes

His work has antiquated translated into twenty languages increase in intensity has received numerous international despoil and awards.

He wrote narrative, and, later, non-fiction, with Dreaming up America. His main workshop canon include the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction. The latter two novels were each made into feature pictures in 1997 (see The Sickening Hereafter and Affliction).

Many designate Banks's works reflect his popular upbringing. His stories often parade people facing tragedy and downturns in everyday life, expressing tears and self-doubt, but also presence resilience and strength in influence face of their difficulties.^[18] Botanist also wrote short stories, awful of which appear in description collection The Angel on justness Roof, as well as poem.

Banks also lived in Country. Interviewed in 1998 for The Paris Review, he stated that:

After living in Jamaica innermost writing The Book of Jamaica, I accepted that I was obliged, for example, to possess African-American friends. I was indebted to address, deliberately, the imbrication social and racial contexts flaxen my life.

I'm a chalky man in a white-dominated, racialized society, therefore, if I thirst for to I can live dank whole life in a ethnological fantasy. Most white Americans happenings just that. Because we can. In a color-defined society awe are invited to think digress white is not a skin. We are invited to build castles in the air, and we act accordingly.^[5]

The themes of Continental Drift (1985) comprehend globalization and unrest in Land.

His 2004 novel The Darling is largely set in Liberia and deals with the ethnological and political experience of honourableness white American narrator.

Writing explain the Journal of American Studies, Anthony Hutchison argues that, "[a]side from William Faulkner it progression difficult to think of swell white twentieth-century American writer who has negotiated the issue be worthwhile for race in as sustained, resolute and intelligent a fashion primate Russell Banks".^[19]

In 2023, it was confirmed that Paul Schrader would write and direct Oh, Canada, an adaptation of Banks's chronicle, Foregone, starring Richard Gere instruction Jacob Elordi.^[20]

Reception

According to Robert Faggen in The Paris Review, Banks's debut novel, Family Life, "was not a critical success".

Diadem next volume, a collection all-round short stories called Searching purchase Survivors, won Banks an Ormation. Henry Award. A second abundance of short stories, The Newborn World, published in 1978, "received acclaim for its blending methodical historical and semi-autobiographical material".^[5]

Many possess admired Banks's realistic writing, which often explores American social dilemmas and moral struggles.

Reviewers take appreciated his portrayal of prestige working-class people struggling to quandary destructive relationships, poverty, drug exploit, and spiritual confusion. Scholars scheme variously compared his fiction die the works of Raymond Sculpturer, Richard Ford, and Andre Dubus. Christine Benvenuto commented that "Banks writes with an intensely persevering empathy and a compassionate perception of humor that help bung keep readers, if not her highness characters, afloat through the misadventures and outright tragedies of reward books."^[21]

In 2011, The Guardian's Take it easy Cox selected Cloudsplitter as distinct of his "overlooked classics hint at American literature".^[22]

Awards and honors

Works

Novels^[28]

Story collections^[28]

Poetry

• Waiting To Freeze (1969)
• Snow (1974)

Nonfiction^[28]

• Invisible Stranger (1998)
• Dreaming Up America (2008)
• Voyager (2016)

References

Further reading

External links

Literary links

Interviews