Richard Ford is the author of the widely admired collection of short stories, Rock Springs; another collection of stories, Women with Men: Three Stories; the novella, The Womanizer; and five novels: A Piece of My Heart, The Ultimate Good Luck, Wildlife, The Sportswriter and Independence Day. In 1995, Independence Day was selected as the MSU Libraries' four millionth volume. That same year Richard Ford won the Pulitzer Prize as well as the Pen/Faulkner Award for that novel. His most recent work, A Multitude of Sins, is a collection of short stories.

In addition, he has also served as editor for The Granta Book of American Short Stories, Eudora Welty: Stories, Essays, and Memoirs, and The Essential Tales of Chekhov. His many stories and essays have appeared in such magazines and journals as Granta, The New Yorker, Michigan Quarterly, TriQuarterly, The Best American Essays, The Best American Short Stories, and The Best American Sports Writing.

Richard Ford came to MSU from Mississippi as a student in 1962, graduating with a B.A. in English in 1966. After brief enrollment in law school, he turned to writing fiction and received his M.F.A. from the writing program at University of California, Irvine. In addition to his steady production of fiction, Ford has also taught writing and literature at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Princeton University, and Williams College. A resident of Maine and Louisiana, Ford is a frequent visitor back to East Lansing. In 1997, he received MSU's Distinguished Alumni Award for his outstanding literary accomplishments. His papers and manuscripts are located in Special Collections where they are available for use.

"Haunting.. In each of these stories..there is something as delicate as the atmosphere in a Henry James tale...There is also the spirit of something ineffable... a yearning for the world to be better than we expect. Chekhov and Cheever mastered such miracles from everyday dramas. Ford is among their company." –The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, review: A Multitude of Sins

For more information on Richard Ford, please visit these websites:
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/ford_richard/
http://mswritersandmusicians.com/writers/richard-ford.html

To view Special Collections' holdings of Ford's work, please click here.