Richard Powers

Richard Powers is an American novelist who writes ambitious fiction about science, music, technology and the natural world. He grew up in Lincolnwood, outside Chicago, and spent several of his teenage years in Bangkok. He began college as a physics major at the University of Illinois before switching to English, earning bachelor's and master's degrees there, and then worked as a computer programmer in Boston before turning to fiction.

His first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, appeared in 1985. The Echo Maker (2006), the story of a young man in Nebraska who believes his sister has been replaced by an impostor after a brain injury, won the National Book Award for Fiction. Operation Wandering Soul was a National Book Award finalist in 1993. The Overstory, a novel about trees and the people drawn to defend them, won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Powers taught for many years at the University of Illinois, where he served as a professor and writer in residence. He now lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.