Skip to content Skip to footer

Author Russell Banks on Writing Through the Voices of Outcasts, Criminals and Revolutionaries

We speak with acclaimed novelist Russell Banks, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist known for drawing on his working-class background to write about criminals, outcasts and revolutionaries. “I know that as a kid in a broken home that was marred by alcoholism and violence and so forth, storytelling was a way, just within the circle of … Continued

We speak with acclaimed novelist Russell Banks, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist known for drawing on his working-class background to write about criminals, outcasts and revolutionaries. “I know that as a kid in a broken home that was marred by alcoholism and violence and so forth, storytelling was a way, just within the circle of the family, for me and my brothers and so on, and for myself, to save ourselves. We could make sense of an otherwise incoherent life for children.” Banks has written a dozen novels and several short story collections. In “Cloudsplitter,” he focused on the revolutionary abolitionist John Brown; in “Affliction,” a paranoid alcoholic; and in “Rule of the Bone,” a 14-year-old drug dealer. Bank’s latest book, “Lost Memory of Skin,” explores the plight of sex offenders trying to live among society as outcasts.

Keep the press free. Fight political repression.

Truthout urgently appeals for your support. Under pressure from an array of McCarthyist anti-speech tactics, independent journalists at Truthout face new and mounting political repression.

We rely on your support to publish journalism from the frontlines of political movements. In fact, we’re almost entirely funded by readers like you. Please contribute a tax-deductible gift at this critical moment!