FORD, RICHARD

born Feb. 16, 1944 , Jackson, Miss., U.S. Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer of novels and short stories. Ford attended Michigan State University (B.A., 1966), Washington University Law School, and the University of California, Irvine (M.A., 1970), and subsequently taught at several American colleges and universities. His first novel, A Piece of My Heart (1976), is set on an island in the southern Mississippi River and contrasts an intellectual with an impulsive man in an atmosphere of menace and violence; critics noted the influence of William Faulkner. The Ultimate Good Luck (1981) presents an American in Mexico who is drawn reluctantly into violence and murder as he tries to get his girlfriend's brother out of jail. In the early 1980s Ford worked for a sports magazine; Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of Ford's novel The Sportswriter (1986), is an alienated, middle-aged sportswriter reflecting on his life. Bascombe returns in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day (1995); he is divorced and leading a rather empty life until he spends an emotional and spiritual Fourth of July weekend with his son. Together they find hope and redemption. Ford also wrote short stories about lonely and damaged people, collected in Rock Springs (1987) and Women with Men (1997). In his fourth novel, Wildlife (1990), a teenager in rugged Montana country witnesses the breakup of his parents' marriage. Ford coedited The Best American Short Stories of 1990 (1990) and edited The Granta Book of the American Short Story (1991).