Richard Ford

Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1944. He made his literary debut in 1976 with the novel "A Piece of My Heart." Alongside Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, and Cormac McCarthy, although differing from them in literary style, he was considered by Bill Buford, the editor of "Granta" magazine, as one of the leading figures of "dirty realism" in American fiction in the early '80s. He has authored the short story collections "Rock Springs" (1987), "Women with Men: Three Stories" (1997), and "A Multitude of Sins" (2002), as well as the novels "The Ultimate Good Luck" (1981), "Wildlife" (1990), "The Sportswriter" (1986), "Independence Day" (1995), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, "The Lay of the Land" (2006), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award—these three novels feature the character Frank Bascombe—"Canada" (2012), which won the Prix Femina Étranger, and the interconnected novel "Let Me Be Frank with You" (2014), where Frank Bascombe reappears, and which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is the autobiographical memoir "Between Them: Remembering My Parents" (2017). In June 2017, he visited Athens and delivered the annual lecture dedicated to Kimon Friar, invited by the American College of Athens.