Richard Powers

When Richard Powers was 11, his family moved from Illinois to Thailand, where they stayed until he was 16. While living abroad, Powers learned to play multiple instruments and developed a great love for reading. Back in the U.S., he attended the University of Illinois, where he majored in English. Powers had initially intended to major in physics, but he found himself repelled by the specialization this required and instead preferred the “aerial view” of life offered by literature. In 1980, Powers moved to Boston to work as a computer programmer and freelance data processor. After being inspired by a photograph at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, he quit his job and began his first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which was published in 1985. Powers then moved to the Netherlands and began writing full time, completing the novels Prisoner’s Dilemma and The Gold Bug Variations. Powers continued to write novels during a residence at Cambridge and then back in the U.S., where he still teaches and writes. His works are known for focusing on science, technology, and music, all through the lens of fiction. His 12th novel, The Overstory (2018), won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.