Richard Russo is the nation’s most celebrated novelist of crumbling Rust Belt towns and the lives of their blue-collar inhabitants. A son of Gloversville, he frequently sets his fiction in Upstate New York. Russo received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls (2001), which was adapted as an HBO miniseries starring Ed Harris and Helen Hunt. His most recent novel, Everybody’s Fool (2016), is a sequel to his 1993 novel Nobody’s Fool, which became an Oscar-nominated movie starring Paul Newman. Russo’s new book is The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life (2018). Booklist said, “For aspiring writers, Russo’s musings on the art and craft of the novel are a trove of knowledge and guidance.”