Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Richard Russo is the author of ten novels, most recently Somebody's Fool, Chances Are…, Everybody's Fool and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of stories; and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody's Fool, was adapted into a multiple-award-winning miniseries; in 2017, he received France's Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He lives in Portland, Maine.
This bio was last updated on 07/09/2023. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
Was there a particular event or image that sparked Empire Falls?
When I finish a novel, it's hard to go back and try to reconstruct its
beginnings. It's a little like an interrogation: what did you know and when did
you know it? Here are a couple of things, though. When I was living in
Waterville, Maine, some years ago, a factory closed down that had employed a
large number of women who had been sewing famous-label men's dress shirts for
much of their lives. They'd done everything they could to save their jobs and
the factory, but the multi-national company that owned it shut them down anyway.
That struck me as a story that was playing out all over the country, if not the
world. From the beginning of my writing career, I've always been interested in
ordinary people swept up in economic and political forces they can't begin to
comprehend, as well as in the changing face of American labor. Becoming a writer
has only deepened my sympathies for working people, who are always, it seems to
me, the first to be sold out.
The other event that had burrowed deep was the school shooting in Paducah,
especially the question it begged: how could such a thing happen here? The
answers that are typically...
The only completely consistent people are the dead
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.