Russell Earl Banks

Russell Earl Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and raised in working-class New Hampshire by his mother after his father, a plumber, abandoned the family. Banks worked as a pipefitter and bookstore clerk before graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He went on to teach at Princeton University and Columbia University.

Banks became one of the foremost American chroniclers of working-class despair, domestic tragedy, and moral fracture. His 1989 novel Affliction and his 1991 novel The Sweet Hereafter were both adapted into acclaimed, award-winning motion pictures. His monumental 1998 historical novel Cloudsplitter reimagined the life of abolitionist John Brown from the perspective of his son Owen, earning widespread critical acclaim as an American epic on racial reckoning. Banks served as the president of the International Parliament of Writers from 2000 to 2005.