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.
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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...
Lauren Acampora's fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, and Antioch Review. Raised in Connecticut, she now lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband, ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Everybody's Fool
Try:
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Paul Auster is the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Sunset Park, The Book of Illusions, Moon Palace, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006, he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Empire Falls
Try:
Sunset Park
by Paul Auster
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