Russell Banks life and biography

Russell Banks is an American writer of fiction and poetry.

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 (see Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter).

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, some of which appear in the collection The Angel on the Roof, as well as poetry. He has written a movie adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road for producer Francis Ford Coppola, 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, with Cate Blanchett in the main role. Banks was the 1985 recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for fiction. Cloudsplitter was purported to have been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction that eventually went to Michael Cunningham's The Hours. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996.

Author of books:

Waiting to Freeze (1967, novel)
Snow (1975, novel)
Family Life (1975, novel)
The New World (1976, short stories)
Hamilton Stark (1978, novel)
The Book of Jamaica (1980, novel)
Trailerpark (1981, short stories)
The Relation of My Imprisonment (1984, novel)
Continental Drift (1985, novel)
Success Stories (1986, short stories)
Affliction (1989, novel)
The Sweet Hereafter (1991, novel)
Rule of the Bone (1995, novel)
Cloudsplitter (1998, novel)
The Angel on the Roof (2000, short stories)

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