Russell Banks' novels include Searching for Survivors, Family Life, Hamilton Stark, The New World, The Book of Jamaica, Trailerpark, The Relation of My Imprisonment, Continental Drift, Success Stories, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Angel on the Roof, The Invisible Stranger (with Arturo Patten), and most recently, The Darling. Two of his novels have been adapted for feature-length films: The Sweet Hereafter (directed by Atom Goyan, winner of the Grand Prix and International Critics Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival) and Affliction (directed by Paul Schrader, starring Nick Nolte, Willem Dafoe, Sissy Spacek, and James Coburn). He was raised in New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts.

Banks won numerous awards and prizes for his work, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, an Ingram Merrill Award, The St. Lawrence Award for Short Fiction, The O. Henry Award, a Best American Short Story Award, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The John Dos Passos Prize. He taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, University of New Hampshire, New England College, New York University, and Princeton University.

He was married to the poet Chase Twichell, and was the father of four grown daughters.