Author on Writing the Voices of Outcasts, Criminals and Revolutionaries

Democracy Now host Amy Goodman spoke with acclaimed novelist Russell Banks, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist known for drawing on his working-class background to write about criminals, outcasts and revolutionaries. “I know that as a kid in a broken home that was marred by alcoholism and violence and so forth, storytelling was a way, just within the circle of the family, for me and my brothers and so on, and for myself, to save ourselves. We could make sense of an otherwise incoherent life for children.”

Banks, who was chairman of Cities of Refuge North America and invited City of Asylum/Pittsburgh founders to be part of the U.S. network, has written a dozen novels and several short story collections. In “Cloudsplitter,” he focused on the revolutionary abolitionist John Brown; in “Affliction,” a paranoid alcoholic; and in “Rule of the Bone,” a 14-year-old drug dealer. Bank’s latest book, “Lost Memory of Skin,” explores the plight of sex offenders trying to live among society as outcasts.

Read Democracy Now’s rush transcript here