Russell Earl Banks was born March 28, 1940, in Newton, Massachusetts, the eldest of Earl and Flo- rence Banks' four children. They were a workingclass family who reared their children in Barnstead, New Hampshire. Banks's early life was fraught with difficulty. He endured near-poverty with his family and watched his parents' marriage decline into divorce. Today, Banks is married to his fourth wife and is the father of four daughters.
At the age of eighteen, Banks enrolled at Colgate College but dropped out after only eight weeks. He felt out of place because his fellow students were wealthy. He decided to join Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba but could only afford to go as far as Florida, where he took odd jobs and lived in a trailer park. At that time, he began writing short fiction......
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