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.

​​Not everyone can pay for the news. But if you can, we need your support.

Truthout is widely read among people with lower ­incomes and among young people who are mired in debt. Our site is read at public libraries, among people without internet access of their own. People print out our articles and send them to family members in prison — we receive letters from behind bars regularly thanking us for our coverage. Our stories are emailed and shared around communities, sparking grassroots mobilization.

We’re committed to keeping all Truthout articles free and available to the public. But in order to do that, we need those who can afford to contribute to our work to do so.

We’ll never require you to give, but we can ask you from the bottom of our hearts: Will you donate what you can, so we can continue providing journalism in the service of justice and truth?