Tuesday, July 2, 2013 at 4:30 pm. On the day he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his novel, Empire Falls, Richard Russo didn't sit around waiting for a phone call from the prize committee. He spent the day playing tennis with a friend instead. When he returned home, his wife, Barbara, was standing on the front porch.
"The look on her face was one I had not seen before," Russo says. He recalls thinking that "either someone has died or I've won the Pulitzer."
Russo, the author of several novels, including Straight Man, Nobody's Fool, and Bridge of Sighs, recently spoke at Vermont College of Fine Arts. In his conversation with college president Thomas Greene, he discusses writing habits, teaching fiction, and balancing one's writing life and career.
