Novelist Richard Russo

Major American novelist Richard Russo, whose work has brought national attention to the comedy and sadness of blue-collar life in Upstate New York’s small towns, returned to the NYS Writers Institute on Tuesday, August 29, 2023, for a conversation with Times Union Editor Casey Seiler. Somebody’s Fool, the final installment in Russo's beloved “North Bath” trilogy, was published earlier in the year. Other books in the trilogy include Nobody’s Fool (1993), which became a major motion picture starring Paul Newman, and Everybody’s Fool (2016). Russo received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls (2001), adapted as a 2005 HBO miniseries starring Ed Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Helen Hunt, and Paul Newman. His 1997 academic satire, Straight Man, set at a small Pennsylvania college, is currently the basis of a new TV show, "Lucky Hank," starring Bob Odenkirk on AMC.