Richard Russo
About the Author
Richard Russo and contributors to A Healing Touch: True Stories of Life, Death, and Hospice, gather with two who inspired the book. Pictured left to right (front row) Leon Duff, Monica Wood, Richard Russo, Susan Sterling, Dale Marie Clark, and (back row) Wesley McNair, Gerry Boyle, and Bill Roorbach. Russo decided to undertake the book project after his long-time friend Duff and Clark asked Russo to give a benefit reading. Russo realized a book about the hospice experience would do far more for the cause. Clark is executive director of the Hospice Volunteers of the Waterville Area in Waterville, Maine.
Rosemary Herbert
Richard Russo’s novel Empire Falls, won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and was named the year’s best novel by Time magazine. The book was also adapted into an acclaimed HBO mini-series starring Paul Newman and Helen Hunt.
Russo is also the author of the novels Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody’s Fool, and Straight Man. His shorter fiction is collected in The Whore’s Child and Other Stories. His latest novel is Bridge of Sighs, published by Knopf. He is also an accomplished screenwriter.
Russo’s most recent book represents a departure for the best-selling fiction writer. In A Healing Touch: True Stories of Life, Death, and Hospice, he turns to nonfiction in order to raise funds for and bring attention to the cause of hospice volunteerism. Here Russo and five other writers prove the close of life need not be filled with darkness, when hospice help is at hand. The book includes intensely personal accounts by Russo, Gerry Boyle, Wesley McNair, Bill Roorbach, Susan Sterling, and Monica Wood. All royalties and 10 percent of publisher Down East Books’ proceeds will be donated to the hospice cause.
A native of Gloversville, New York, Russo earned a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. He has served on the faculties of Arizona State, Penn State-Altoona, Southern Connecticut State University, Southern Illinois University, and Colby College. Presently, he resides with his wife in coastal Maine.
For more information about A Healing Touch or to purchase the book, click here.
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