Russell Banks
Encyclopedia
Russell Banks is an American writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 of fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

 and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

.

Biography

Russell Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts
Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States bordered to the east by Boston. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Newton was 85,146, making it the eleventh largest city in the state.-Villages:...

 on March 28, 1940. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

. He lives in upstate New York
Upstate New York
Upstate New York is the region of the U.S. state of New York that is located north of the core of the New York metropolitan area.-Definition:There is no clear or official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York...

, and has been named a New York State Author. He is also Artist-in-Residence at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...

. He is married to the poet Chase Twichell
Chase Twichell
Chase Twichell is an American poet, professor, and publisher, the founder in 1999, of Ausable Press. Her most recent poetry collection is Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been, which earned her Claremont Graduate University's prestigious $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award....

. Banks is an American novelist best known for his “detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters”. His stories usually revolve around his own childhood experiences, the often reflect “moral themes and personal relationships”.

Career

Banks is a member of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. He has written fiction, and more recently, non-fiction, with Dreaming up America. His main works include the novels Continental Drift
Continental Drift (novel)
Continental Drift is a 1985 novel by Russell Banks. Set in the early 1980s, it follows two plots, through which Banks explores the relationship between apparently distant people drawn together in the world under globalization, which Banks compares to the geologic phenomena of continental drift...

, Rule of the Bone
Rule of the Bone
Rule Of The Bone is a 1995 novel by Russell Banks. It is a bildungsroman about the 14-year-old American narrator, Chappie, later dubbed Bone , who, after having dropped out of school, turns to the guidance of a Rastafarian Jamaican migrant worker.-Structure:The novel is split into two halves, the...

, Cloudsplitter
Cloudsplitter
Cloudsplitter is a 1998 historical novel by Russell Banks relating the story of abolitionist John Brown.The novel is narrated as a retrospective by John Brown's son, Owen Brown, from his hermitage in the San Gabriel Mountains of California...

, The Sweet Hereafter
The Sweet Hereafter
The Sweet Hereafter is a 1991 novel by American author Russell Banks. It is set in a small town in the aftermath of a deadly school bus accident that has killed most of the town's children...

, and Affliction. The latter two novels were each made into feature films in 1997 (see Affliction
Affliction (film)
Affliction is an US-American drama film produced in 1997, written and directed by Paul Schrader from the novel by Russell Banks. It stars Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, James Coburn and Willem Dafoe....

 and The Sweet Hereafter
The Sweet Hereafter (film)
The Sweet Hereafter is a 1997 Canadian film written and directed by Atom Egoyan. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Russell Banks.-Plot:...

).

Many of Banks's works reflect his working-class upbringing. His stories often show people facing tragedy and downturns in everyday life, expressing sadness and self-doubt, but also showing resilience and strength in the face of their difficulties. Banks has also written short stories
Short Stories
Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...

, some of which appear in the collection The Angel on the Roof, as well as poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

. He has written a movie adaptation of Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

's On the Road
On the Road
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...

for producer Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...

, which was slated for production in 2006. It is not known if Banks's screenplay will be used in the final version. Banks's novel The Darling is going to be made into a feature film directed by Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

, with Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett
Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett is an Australian actress. She came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 biopic film Elizabeth, for which she won British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Golden Globe Awards, and earned her first Academy Award...

 in the main role. Banks was the 1985 recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for fiction. Cloudsplitter
Cloudsplitter
Cloudsplitter is a 1998 historical novel by Russell Banks relating the story of abolitionist John Brown.The novel is narrated as a retrospective by John Brown's son, Owen Brown, from his hermitage in the San Gabriel Mountains of California...

was purported to have been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction that eventually went to Michael Cunningham's The Hours
The Hours (novel)
The Hours is a 1998 novel written by Michael Cunningham. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was later made into an Oscar-winning 2002 movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.-Plot introduction:The book...

. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

 in 1996.

Critics

Many have admired Russell Bank’s form of realistic writing. His writing often times compliments and or explores the modern American ways. Reviewers have condoned him on the portrayal of the working-class struggling to overcome some of the issues they are faced with such as destructive relationships, poverty, drug abuse, and spiritual confusion. Banks has been acclaimed for his strong-spirited characters and narrators. Scholars have variously compared Banks's fiction to the works of Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver
Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....

, Richard Ford
Richard Ford
Richard Ford is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories.-Early...

, and Andre Dubus
Andre Dubus
Andre Dubus, II was an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer. Dubus is recognized as one of the most prolific American short-story writers in the 20th century.-Early life and education:...

. Christine Benvenuto has commented that, “Banks writes with an intensely focused empathy and a compassionate sense of humor that help to keep readers, if not his characters, afloat through the misadventures and outright tragedies of his books.”

Literary links


Interviews

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