Richard Powers

Richard Powers is an award-winning American novelist, many of whose works explore themes connected to science and technology.

Whilst working as a computer programmer in Boston in 1980, Powers was inspired by a 1914 photograph entitled Young Farmers by August Sander, which he saw at an exhibition. Quitting his job, he spent two years writing Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance which was published in 1985. After moving to the Netherlands Powers penned many acclaimed novels such as The Gold Bug Variations (1991), Galatea 2.2 (1995) and Orfeo (2014) which tackled themes of genetics, artificial intelligence and bio-terrorism respectively. In 2019, Powers won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, a sweeping epic about the profound connection between humanity and trees across several centuries. His novel Bewilderment, about a father battling his son’s rare health condition, was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize.