Mark Richard

Mark Richard is an American writer born in 1955 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, who grew up in Texas and Virginia amid poverty and medical challenges from deformed hips that required years in charity hospitals. His debut short story collection, The Ice at the Bottom of the World, won the 1990 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award, establishing his reputation in literary fiction, and he later authored the award-winning Charity, the bestselling novel Fishboy, and the memoir House of Prayer No. 2. He has received numerous accolades including NEA and Whiting fellowships, published in major magazines like The New Yorker, and worked as a screenwriter and TV producer on projects like Stop-Loss and The Good Lord Bird.