Black Mountain Institute (BMI) Podcast #33: Russell Banks - A Reading and Conversation - 2/24/09

In this episode, writer Russell Banks discusses his life and works and reads from two recent pieces of short fiction. Banks is the founding president of Cities of Refuge North America and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His novels include _The Reserve_, _Cloudsplitter_, _The Darling_, _The Relation of My Imprisonment_, _Continental Drift_, _Rule of the Bone_, _Affliction_, and _The Sweet Hereafter_. The latter two works were adapted into feature films that received widespread critical acclaim, and _The Darling_ is currently under development by Focus Features and Martin Scorsese. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards, including the Ingram Merrill Award and the John Dos Passos Award. Banks lives in upstate New York and is the New York State Author. He will serve at the Elias Ghanem Chair in Creative Writing at UNLV from mid-February to mid-March. This event took place February 24, 2009 in the UNLV Student Union Theatre in Las Vegas, NV.