AUTHOR RUSSELL BANKS TO SPEAK AT LIBRARY

1958 Wakefield High School grad; Author of “Affliction”
When novelist Russell Banks speaks at Beebe Library at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 10, it will be more than just a homecoming.
A 1958 Wakefield High School graduate, Russell Banks grew up in a working-class world that played a major role in informing and shaping his writing. Since leaving Wakefield, Banks has become one of America’s most prolific and acclaimed novelists. Two of his books, Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter were adapted into major Hollywood motion pictures.
Russell Banks’ appearance at Beebe Library is part of “Stories for a Safer Wakefield,” a month-long community inquiry during March intended to provoke thought and discussion about violence and its deterrence. His novel, “Affliction” explores the connection between alcohol and domestic violence. The movie adaptation starred Nick Nolte, James Coburn, Sissy Spacek and Mary Beth Hurt. Coburn won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role, and Nolte received a Best Actor nomination.

At Beebe Library on March 10, Banks will read from his work, talk about the movie and his writing, and engage in discussion with the audience.
(Beebe Library will offer a free public screening of the film Affliction at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 1 in the Lecture Hall.)
Through a dozen novels and short story collections that have won him Guggenheim and NEA grants and a St. Lawrence Prize for fiction, Banks has made a life’s work of charting the causes and effects of the terrible things “normal” men can and will do. He writes with an intensely focused empathy and a compassionate sense of humor that help to keep his readers, if not his characters, afloat through the misadventures and outright tragedies in his books.
In addition to Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter, Banks’s titles includeCloudsplitter, Rule of the Bone, Continental Drift, Trailerpark, Searching for Survivors, The Darling, Success Stories and The Book of Jamaica.

Among the numerous honors and awards Banks has received are the Ingram Merrill Award, the John Dos Passos Award and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. “Continental Drift” and “Cloudsplitter” were Pulitzer Prize finalists. “Affliction” and “Cloudsplitter” werePEN/Faulkner finalists.

Russell Banks’ talk at Beebe Library on March 10 is free, but reservations are required. Reserve your seat at the Reference Desk, by phone at 781-246-6334, x2, or email@wakefieldlibrary.org.

This event is one of a number of local programs that will be offered during March as part of “Stories for a Safer Wakefield,” a cooperative project involving multiple organizations and coordinated by Beebe Library and theWakefield Alliance Against Violence.