The Overstory makes Booklist’s Hot List of heavily anticipated books for the spring (October 1, 2017).

(link to p. 7 of Booklist, October 1, 2107, where it appears)

Screenshots of the American and British advance reader copy covers of Powers’s upcoming novel The Overstory.

 

Richard Powers’s new novel, The Overstory, published by Norton, is due in bookstores April 3, 2018, and from William Heinemann in UK April 12.

Richard Powers is, to my mind, one of the greatest living American novelists. He is certainly one of the most formidable, rewarding authors I have ever read. This new novel is endlessly fascinating, extraordinary and utterly unforgettable.”  (Jason Arthur, publisher)

A monumental novel about reimagining our place in the living world, by one of our most “prodigiously talented”(New York Times Book Review) novelists.

In an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times (June 16, 2017),  Richard Powers addresses the Trump administration’s efforts to delist national monuments in “Keep America Wild.”

A playlist for The Time of Our Singing is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoksMEuYT21crKgmBrRehqb1MlPqIyfwq

 

Richard Powers joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss Steven Millhauser’s “A Visit,” from a 1997 issue of the The New Yorker, January 3, 2017 (podcast).

“Professors at America’s elite colleges pick one book every student should read in 2017,” Business Insider, Abby Jackson, December 22, 2016. James Berger of Yale University picks Orfeo.

“It is a story of music and genetics in our contemporary age of terror and surveillance. An idiosyncratic retelling of the Orpheus myth, an elderly avant garde composer who feels he has tried and exhausted every possible musical experiment, returns to his first love, biology, and seeks to inscribe a musical score onto the mutating DNA of bacteria. Yup.

“But his efforts are mistaken to be acts of bioterrorism, and so he flees into the ‘underworld’ of contemporary America, returning also to the various Euridices of his past. Amazing book —and you’ll learn a hell of a lot about music, science, politics … and even about Life!”

Video of full performance of Project Orfeo at Duke University, September 25, 2016. Richard Powers joins Duke faculty composer Scott Lindroth, the Horszowski Piano Trio, clarinetist Benjamin Fingland, flutist Laura Gilbert and Duke faculty violist Jonathan Bagg in a mixed-media concert that combines readings from Powers’ 2014 novel Orfeo with performances of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, and the premiere a new Lindroth composition.

“Words and Music: A Conversation about Project Orfeo,” video of a discussion with Richard Powers, violist Jonathan Bagg, and composer Scott Lindroth about collaborations between musicians and writers, and these artists’ experience with their current collaboration for “Project Orfeo.” “Project Orfeo” is a mixed-media concert that combines readings by Powers from his 2014 novel, Orfeo, with music composed by Lindroth and performed by musicians including Bagg, the Horszowski Piano Trio, clarinetist Benjamin Fingland, and flutist Laura Gilbert. The discussion took place on September 23, 2016, followed by the concert on September 25, both at Duke University.

Words and Music: A Conversation about “Project Orfeo,” casual discussion with Richard Powers, Jonathan Bagg, and Scott Lindroth, 12 noon, September 23, Duke University.