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Richard Powers is congratulated by well-wishers after receiving the award for best fiction at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York City on November 15, 2006. (© AP Images)
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November 22-27, 2006. Richard Powers, the author of eight previous novels and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, won the literary award for his latest book, The Echo Maker. The award was announced on November 15 in New York City. During a reading tour through Germany, which was co-sponsored by the U.S. Embassy and the Fischer Verlag, with stops in Hamburg (Nov 22), Berlin (Nov 23), Frankfurt (Nov 24) and Cologne (Nov 27), Richard Powers took time to chat about his The Echo Maker and earlier works. Chat transcript
As a high school student, Powers had a penchant, and then a passion, for art, music, history. He was always, however, captivated by science, and in the aftermath of the Russians’ launch of Sputnik, imagined his destiny to be that of a scientist. Paleontology, oceanography, archaeology and then physics enticed Powers. As a physics major in college, he came under the influence of a professor who convinced him that literature was “the perfect place for someone who wanted the aerial view.” Powers – in nine novels – has been able to blend his love of science with his devotion to the arts. As Gail Caldwell wrote in a Boston Globe review of The Echo Maker, "his formidable intelligence possesses a sweetness that can still be dropped to its knees by music or a flight of birds – he’s a geek for all things exquisite."
Powers was a MacArthur Fellow in 1989 and received a Lannan Literary Award in 1999. He teaches in the Creative Writing M.F.A. program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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