David Adams Richards

1950-

David Adams Richards (novelist, essayist, non-fiction writer, poet, and screenwriter) was born in Newcastle, New Brunswick on 17 October 1950. Richards attended St. Mary's Academy, a Catholic primary school, until the third grade. Richards completed his primary, middle, and high school education at Harkins Academy from which he graduated in 1969 and went to work at Heath Steele Mines. Richards moved to Fredericton in the fall of 1969 to attend St. Thomas University. He completed The Keeping of Gusties, an unpublished first novel, for an English class instead of writing a final paper. He withdrew from STU shortly after the beginning of his second year and returned to Newcastle.In 1970, Richards self-published a poetry collection, One Step Inside. The following year, in the fall, he returned to STU.  Around the same time he began attending the weekly meetings of the Ice House Gang. His work from that period appeared in The Antigonish Review and The Fiddlehead (1972). A chapbook, Small Heroics, was soon published and he began writing the novel The One in Many, later titled The Coming of Winter.  In 1973, Richards dropped out of STU and became a full-time writer. Later that year, he won the Norma Epstein Prize for the first five chapters of The Coming of Winter, an Ontario Arts Council Fellowship, and a Young Artists and Writers Canada Council Grant, which, together, allowed him the financial security to focus on writing Blood Ties (1976), his second novel. After the manuscript for Blood Ties was finished and sent to Oberon, Richards visited Spain, where he wrote most of the first draft of a play, "The Dungarvon Whooper." Soon after, in Victoria, BC, he began writing a collection of short stories entitled Dancers at Night (1978). He published Lives of Short Duration in 1981.  Richards accepted the position of writer in residence at UNB in 1983.  The following year, he began writing Road to the Stilt House (1985). Richards left UNB after his three-year term ended in 1986 having almost completed the novel Adele, released in 1988 as Nights Below Station Street, the beginning of Richards' Miramichi trilogy. Richards received the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1988 for Nights.  The same characters from previous novels reappear in the next two novels in the trilogy, Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (1990) and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (1993).  Richards moved to Saint John in 1989.  In 1996, Wounded was made into a film, and Richards published Hope in the Desperate Hour and his first non-fiction book, Hockey Dreams: Memories of a Man Who Couldn't Play.  In 1997, Richards moved to Toronto. The novel The Bay of Love and Sorrows (1998) followed, as did the non-fiction memoir Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi (1998), which was adapted into a film in 2002.  The non-fiction book Lines on the Water received the 1998 Governor General’s Award for non-fiction. In 2000, Richards published Mercy Among the Children, which also won the Governor General’s Award. Richards’ next three novels were River of the Brokenhearted (2003), The Friends of Meager Fortune, and The Lost Highway. In 2008, Richards published Lord Beaverbrook, a biography of Sir William Maxwell Aitken for Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians series.  Richards published God Is: My Search for Faith in a Secular World (2009), Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (2011), and Facing the Hunter: Reflections on a Misunderstood Pursuit (2011).  He is prolific and has published at least 10 books since 2011 Richards has been bestowed several of the most prestigious literary awards for his work, including Member of the Order of Canada in 2009, the Order of New Brunswick, the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Matt Cohen Prize in 2011, the Canadian Authors’ Association Award for Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace in 1991, the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best Book for Friends of Meager Fortune, the Giller Prize (co-winner) for Mercy Among the Children in 2000, and the Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Prize in 2012 for Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. The Writers' Federation of New Brunswick has also honoured Richards by giving out an annual award named after him: the David Adams Richards Prize for Fiction. His latest books include A Fierce and Tumultuous Joy (2022) and The Tragedy of Eva Mott (2022). 

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Newcastle, Fredericton, Bartibog

Archival Material

• David Adams Richards fonds
  ⌄
  Location

  University of New Brunswick Archives & Special Collections

  Website/Catalogue Record

  View Archival Record

  Retrieval Number

  MG L 33

  Date Range of Material

  1968-2003

  Extent

  4.1 m textual records
  18 photographs ; b&w and col. ; 20.32 x 25.4 cm or smaller
  59 computer disks

  Scope and Content Note

  This fonds documents the literary career of David Adams Richards. It includes personal documents; correspondence; and typescript drafts of novels, short stories, articles, plays, book reviews, and screen plays. The fonds also includes several photographs and floppy disks which primarily contain drafts of novels, screenplays, essays, and personal correspondence.