Richard Russo

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING NOVELIST, TO READ FROM
HIS NEW NOVEL, EVERYBODY’S FOOL

NYS Writers Institute, Friday, May 6, 2016
8:00 p.m. Reading | Page Hall, 135 Western Ave., Downtown Campus

EVENT DETAILS:
Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, will read from his new novel, Everybody’s Fool (May 2016), on Friday, May 6, 2016, at 8:00 p.m. in Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, on the University at Albany’s downtown campus. Free and open to the public, the event is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.

PROFILE
Richard Russo is one of America’s most celebrated fiction writers, as well as an acclaimed screenwriter and memoirist.  The New Yorker has said, “There is a big, wry heart beating at the center of Russo’s fiction,” and The New York Times Book Review has called Russo, “one of the best novelists around.” He is the author of eight novels, including Mohawk (1986), That Old Cape Magic (2009), and Empire Falls (2001), for which he received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His new novel, Everybody’s Fool (2016), is a sequel to his novel Nobody’sFool (1993), which was made into a 1994 film starring Paul Newman.

In his new novel Everybody’s Fool (2016), Russo revisits the upstate New York setting and characters of the highly-praised Nobody’s Fool (1993), a novel that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx described as “a rude, comic, harsh, galloping story of four generations of small-town losers, the best literary portrait of the backwater burg since [Sinclair Lewis’s] Main Street.” In a starred review, Carol Haggas of Booklist calls Everybody’s Fool “Triumphant … Russo’s reunion with these beloved characters is genius: silly slapstick and sardonic humor play out in a rambling, rambunctious story that poignantly emphasizes that particular brand of loyalty and acceptance that is synonymous with small-town living.” In another starred review, Kirkus Reviews declares that “Russo hits his trademark trifecta: satisfying, hilarious, and painlessly profound.”

Born in Johnstown, New York, Russo was raised in nearby Gloversville. His debut novel, Mohawk (1986), chronicled the lives of three generations of upstate New Yorkers, with “an attractive, small-town coziness” and “brisk, colorful, and often witty” prose (The New York Times).

In 2001, Russo published Empire Falls, which received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, and was also named one of Time Magazine’s Best Fiction Books of the Year. The New York Times called Empire Falls “rich, humorous, [and] elegantly constructed,” while Salon called it “wry yet compassionate … [a] deep insight into the startling, sometimes disturbing varieties of human nature.” Adapted into an HBO miniseries starring Paul Newman, Ed Harris, and Helen Hunt, Empire Falls received an Emmy Award, as well as two Golden Globe Awards, in 2005.

In addition to his novels, Russo has published a collection of short fiction, entitled The Whore’s Child and Other Stories (2002), and a memoir, entitled Elsewhere (2012), which was named an NPR Best Book of 2012. He has also written several screenplays, including the 1998 film Twilight, starring Paul Newman and Susan Sarandon, and the 2005 thriller The Ice Harvest, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton.

Previous Visits: October 5, 2007 and October 15, 2009

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.