Richard Powers was born on June 18, 1957 in Evanston, Illinois. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After graduation, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts and worked as a computer programmer and freelance data processor. One day he saw August Sander's 1914 black-and-white photograph of three Westerwald farm boys heading to a dance at the Museum of Fine Arts. This photograph inspired Powers to quit his job and try writing a novel.
Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance was published in 1985. His other works include Prisoner's Dilemma, The Gold Bug Variations, Operation Wandering Soul, Galatea 2.2, Plowing the Dark, The Time of Our Singing, and Generosity: An Enhancement. He received numerous awards including the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction for Gain, the National Book Award for The Echo Maker, and Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Overstory: A Novel.
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