Ford, Richard at English => English (The Britannica Concise) Of Explained:
U.S. novelist and short-story writer. Born in Jackson, Miss., he studied at Michigan State Univ., Washington Univ. Law School, and UC-Irving, and has taught at several colleges and universities. His first novel, A Piece of My Heart (1976), showed the influence of W. Faulkner. The Sportswriter (1986) and its sequel, Independence Day (1995, Pulitzer Prize), drew on his experience as a writer for a sports magazine in the 1980s. His story collection Rock Springs (1987) examines the lives of the lonely and alienated.