Richard Powers
Born: June 18, 1957 in Evanston, Illinois
Pen Name: None Connection to Illinois: Powers is an Evanston native. He moved with his family to Lincolnwood in the mid 60's. He graduated from DeKalb High School and attended the University of Illinois, where he later taught literature and creative writing until 2013. Biography: Richard Powers is a novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. While he lived most of his life in Illinois, Powers also lived in Bangkok, Boston, Holland and Cambridge. Most of his books have been inspired by events in his life and the places his life has taken him. In 1992 Powers accepted a position as writer-in-residence at the University of Illinois and was named to Illinois's endowed Swanlund Chair in English in 1996 and named Center for Advanced Study Professor of English in 1999. In 2013, he left the University of Illinois to teach at Stanford. Today, he lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.
Awards:
- """The Overstory"""
- -- Pulitzer Prize in Fiction
- -- #1 New York Times Bestseller
- -- Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
- -- New York Times Notable Book
- -- Best Book of the Year, Washington Post
- -- Best Book of the Year, Time
- -- Best Book of the Year, Oprah Magazine
- -- Best Book of the Year, Newsweek
- -- Best Book of the Year, Chicago Tribune
- -- Best Book of the Year, Kirkus
- """Gain"""
- -- James Fenimore Cooper Prize, 1998
- """The Gold Bug Variations"""
- -- TIME Magazine's Best Novel, 1991
- """Plowing the Dark"""
- -- Vursell Award, 2000
- """The Echo Maker"""
- -- National Book Award, 2006
Website: http://www.richardpowers.net
Selected Titles
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Gain ISBN: 1446413411 OCLC: 1004567669 |
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Galatea 2.2 / ISBN: 0312423136 OCLC: 55050801 Picador, New York : 2004. |
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Generosity / ISBN: 1848871252 OCLC: 501394760 Atlantic Books, London : 2010, ©2009. When Russell Stone becomes the teacher of a young Algerian woman with a disturbingly luminous presence, he is both entranced and troubled. How can this refugee from terror radiate such bliss? Is it possible to be so open and alive without coming to serious harm? |
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GOLD BUG VARIATIONS. ISBN: 1784709727 OCLC: 1043402243 VINTAGE, [Place of publication not identified], 2019. |
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Operation wandering soul : ISBN: 006097611X OCLC: 29598531 HarperPerennial, New York : 1994. |
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Plowing the dark / ISBN: 0099286726 OCLC: 965958088 Vintage, London : 2002. |
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Prisoner's dilemma / ISBN: 0060977086 OCLC: 34046495 HarperPerennial, New York : 1996. "Something is wrong with Eddie Hobson, Sr., father of four, sometime history teacher, quizmaster, black humorist, and virtuoso invalid. His recurring fainting spells have worsened, and with his ingrained aversion to doctors, his worried family tries to discover the nature of his sickness. Meanwhile, in private, Eddie puts the finishing touches on a secret project he calls Hobstown, a place that he promises will save him, the world, and everything that's in it." |
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The echo maker / ISBN: 0312426437 OCLC: 148824360 Twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter, suffering from a rare brain disorder that causes him to believe his sister to be an impostor, endeavors to discover the cause of the motor vehicle accident that resulted in his head injury. |
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The gold bug variations / ISBN: 0688098916 OCLC: 22665566 W. Morrow, New York : ©1991. A double love story of two couples separated by a distance of twenty five years. |
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The overstory : ISBN: 039335668X OCLC: 988292556 "An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back to life by creatures of air and light. A hearing-and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers -- each summoned in different ways by trees -- are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest."-- |
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The time of our singing ISBN: 0099453835 OCLC: 59291555 Vintage, London : 2004. |
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Three farmers on their way to a dance ISBN: 9781848871403 OCLC: 649290069 Atlantic, London : 2010. In the spring of 1914, renowned photographer August Sander took a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Powers' brilliant and compelling novel. As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold. The young narrator becomes obsessed with the photo, while Peter Mays, a computer writer in Boston, discovers he has a personal link with it. The three stories connect in a surprising way and provide the reader with a mystery that spans a century of brutality and progress. |