[A photograph of Russell Banks is available at http://www.clarkson.edu/news/photos/banksr.jpg]
Newswise — Award-winning author Russell Banks will be a featured speaker at Clarkson University's 112th Commencement in Potsdam, New York, on Sunday, May 8.
Banks will address the more than 700 Clarkson students being granted bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees that day.
He will also receive an honorary degree from Clarkson his literary contributions over the past four decades and for his inspiration to young writers through his many works and years of teaching.
Born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1940, Banks was raised in New Hampshire, where according to his writings, "the winters were endless, the soil barren, and the houses falling down." The eldest of four children, he says his upbringing played a major role in shaping his writing and published works, which includes 15 works of fiction. Banks' stories capture the experiences of working-class people living in the Northeast and often deal with issues of family, conflict, addiction, racism and economic hardship. His last three novels have been set in what he describes as "hardscrabble" upstate New York towns.
The first in his family to attend college, Banks was admitted to Colgate University in 1958 on full academic scholarship, though he attended "less than a semester." He then worked as a plumber, shoe salesman, and window dresser before enrolling at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1967. Banks returned to New Hampshire to teach at Emerson College and later taught at the University of New Hampshire, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Princeton University, where he is Howard G.B. Clarke University Professor of Humanities, Emeritus.
A prolific writer, Banks rapidly gained recognition for his novels and short stories. He has won numerous awards and prizes for this work, among them the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, O. Henry, Pushcart, Fels and Best American Short Story Awards; The John Dos Passos Prize, the St. Lawrence Award for Short Fiction, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a PEN/Faulkner finalist for his novels Affliction and Cloudsplitter and a Pulitzer Prize finalist (Cloudsplitter and Continental Drift). Two of his novels, Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter, have been made into critically acclaimed motion pictures and currently Rule of the Bone, Continental Drift, and The Book of Jamaica are being adapted to film. Cloudsplitter, a historical novel about abolitionist John Brown, is in development with HBO.
Banks makes his home in both Saratoga Springs and Keene, New York. In 2004, he was recognized with the New York State Writers Institute Author Award. He is the president of the International Parliament of Writers and founding president of the North American Network of Cities of Asylum.
Clarkson University, located in Potsdam, New York, is an independent university with a reputation for developing innovative leaders in engineering, business and the arts and sciences. Its academically rigorous, collaborative culture involves 2,700 undergraduates and 400 graduate students in hands-on team projects, multidisciplinary research, and real-world challenges. Many faculty members achieve international recognition for their scholarship and research, and teaching is a priority at every level. For more information, visit http://www.clarkson.edu.
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