Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Joins Columbia Faculty

Nicholas Dirks, Columbia University’s Executive Vice President for Arts and Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Carol Becker, Dean of Columbia University School of the Arts, announced today the appointment of novelist Richard Ford as the soon-to-be-established Emmanuel Roman and Barrie Sardoff Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Writing at Columbia University. Ford will teach in the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University School of the Arts. He will join Columbia’s faculty in Fall 2012.

“I am thrilled to welcome Richard Ford to Columbia,” said Dirks. “He is one of our greatest writers, whose powerful, insightful, and eloquent voice has established him as a pillar of contemporary American fiction. He is also an accomplished teacher and critic and we are delighted he will be a member of our faculty.”

Richard Ford’s novel Independence Day (1995) was the first book to receive both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The book was the second in his critically acclaimed Bascombe Trilogy, which began with The Sportswriter in 1986. His other works include the novels, A Piece of My Heart (1976), The Ultimate Good Luck (1981) and Wildlife (1990), as well as the short fiction collections Rock Springs (1987) and Women with Men (1998). Ford was given the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1995 for his outstanding contributions to the form. He has edited several collections of fiction, including Best American Short Stories 1990, The New Granta Book of the American Short Story (2007) and, most recently, Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work (2011). Ford currently teaches in the graduate writing program at the University of Mississippi. He has taught previously at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Princeton University and Williams College.

“It’s an honor and a happy opportunity to be associated with Columbia,” said Ford, “and especially with the Writing Program, which has such a distinguished history.”