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Russell Banks

(b.1940)

Russell 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, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction. The latter two novels were each made into feature films in 1997.

Genres: Literary Fiction

Novels

   Snow (1974)
   Trailerpark (1981)
   The Relation of My Imprisonment (1983)
   Continental Drift (1985)
   Family Life (1985)
   The Book of Jamaica (1986)
   Hamilton Stark (1986)
   Affliction (1989)
   The Sweet Hereafter (1991)
   Rule of the Bone (1995)
   Cloudsplitter (1998)
   The Darling (2004)
   The Reserve (2008)
   Lost Memory of Skin (2011)
   Foregone (2021)

Omnibus

Outer Banks (2008)

Collections

   Searching for Survivors (1975)
   The New World (1979)
   Success Stories (1986)
   The Angel On the Roof (2000)
   A Permanent Member of the Family (2013)

Anthologies edited

Ploughshares Winter 1993-94: Borderlands (1993) (with Chase Twichell)

Non fiction

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

Awards

	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Best Book nominee (1986) : Continental Drift
	PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction Best Book nominee (1990) : Affliction
	PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction Best Book nominee (1999) : Cloudsplitter
	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Best Book nominee (1999) : Cloudsplitter
	PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction Best Book nominee (2012) : Lost Memory of Skin

Russell Banks recommends

Montreal Stories (2004)
Mavis Gallant
"In Gallant's stories, the conflicts, obsessions, and concerns - the near-impossibility of gaining personal freedom without inflicting harm on those whom you love and who love you; the difficulty of forgiving a cruel and selfish parent without sentimentalizing him; or the pain of failed renewal - are limned with an affectionate irony and generated by a sincere belief in their ultimate significance, significance not just for the characters who embody them, but for the author and, presumably, the reader as well."

The Virgin of Flames (2007)
Chris Abani
"A powerful, scary and beautiful novel. Abani is a force to be reckoned with, a world-class novelist and poet."

If it is Your Life (2010)
James Kelman
"His best stories are great stories, as dark, tough-minded and funny as any I've read in years."

The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana (2020)
Maryse Condé
"Maryse Condé is a treasure of world literature, writing from the center of the African diaspora with brilliance and a profound understanding of all humanity."

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