Richard Powers

Richard Powers was born on June 18, 1957, in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in Lincolnwood before moving to Bangkok at age eleven. He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning a BA in English in 1978 and an MA in 1980. Inspired by a 1914 photograph, he quit a programming job to write his debut novel Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985). He has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. Powers has published fourteen novels, including The Gold Bug Variations (1991), The Echo Maker (2006, National Book Award winner), Orfeo (2014), The Overstory (2018, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), Bewilderment (2021, Booker Prize shortlist), and Playground (2024). His works explore the intersection of modern science—including genetics, AI, music, and environmentalism—with human emotion. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989 and numerous other literary honours.