Russell Banks, award-winning novelist and the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, and professor of the Humanities Council and creative writing, emeritus, died Jan. 8 from cancer at his home in Saratoga Springs, New York. He was 82.
Photo by Nancie Battagliaobit
Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the prolific author wrote 21 books, including fiction, short fiction and non-fiction. Banks employed gritty realism in his stories that explored race, class and power in the lives of working-class Americans. He received the Anisfield-Wolf Award — established in 1939 to recognize books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures — for his Pulitzer-nominated work, Cloudsplitter. His essays and reviews have been published in major magazines, and he has written screenplays and poetry.
Banks joined Princeton University in 1982 and transferred to emeritus status in 1998. He was a pivotal member of the creative writing program and helped shape the continued growth and excellence of the program, prior to the establishment of the Lewis Center for the Arts, alongside distinguished colleagues including Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, James Richardson, Paul Muldoon and Edmund White.
“There was a sense even then that Russell had not only the ambition but the ability to take on some of the most charged subjects in American life, notably race and the class divide that remains largely unacknowledged to this day,” said Paul Muldoon, the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities and professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts, who directed the creative writing program from 1993 to 2002.
And yet, “however serious he was as an artist, Russell always had a smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eye,” Muldoon said. “He clearly adored his students and they clearly adored him.”
“The combination of Russell Banks, Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates as the main teachers of prose fiction through the 1990s helped establish the creative writing program’s reputation as second to none.”
—Paul Muldoon
“Russell Banks was a kind, generous and compassionate professor and colleague when he was teaching at Princeton, and former colleagues and students have spoken fondly of their memories of him,” said Yiyun Li, professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts and director of the Program in Creative Writing.
Read the full obituary on the Princeton University news page
