A short life of the author
Richard Powers (b. 18 June 1957) was born in Evanston, Illinois, and raised in Bangkok and the Chicago suburbs. He studied physics and English at the University of Illinois.
Life and Career
Powers’s novels are driven by ideas — genetics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, ecology, music — rendered with emotional depth. The Gold Bug Variations (1991) — which interweaves the stories of a brilliant geneticist and two young librarians with the structures of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and DNA coding — is his most formally ambitious early novel.
The Echo Maker (2006) — about a man in Nebraska who suffers Capgras syndrome after a car accident, believing his sister has been replaced by an impostor — won the National Book Award. The Overstory (2018) — a novel in nine interlocking stories about people whose lives are changed by trees, structured like a tree itself (roots, trunk, crown, seeds) — won the Pulitzer Prize and became his first bestseller.
Bewilderment (2021) — about an astrobiologist raising his neurodivergent son alone — was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Major Works and Themes
Powers writes about the intersection of science and human experience, about consciousness, ecology, and the nonhuman world. His ambition is to write novels that are commensurate with the complexity of the subjects they address.
Key Works
- The Overstory (2018)
- The Echo Maker (2006)
Collecting Powers
The Overstory first edition (Norton, 2018) signed copies bring $50–$150. Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (Beech Tree/Morrow, 1985) — his debut — brings $50–$200. Powers continues to publish.