Russel Banks

Advisory Board

Russell Banks is the internationally acclaimed author of eighteen works of fiction, including the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, The Book of Jamaica and Lost Memory of Skin, as well as six short story collections, most recently A Permanent Member of the Family. Two of his novels, The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction, have been adapted into award-winning films.  Banks has been a PEN/Faulkner Finalist (Affliction, Cloudsplitter, Lost Memory of Skin) and a Pulitzer Prize Finalist (Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter). His work has received numerous other awards and has been widely translated and anthologized.  Banks is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was New York State Author (2004-2008).  He lives in Miami, Florida, and in upstate New York with his wife, the poet Chase Twichell.