
Richard Powers has written the libretto for The Origin, a new opera being composed by Bruce Adolphe. Scenes will be performed by soprano Christie Conover, tenor Joseph Gaines, and baritone Gregory Gerbrandt, with pianist Tim Burns, at the Off the Hook Arts Festival, in Fort Collins, Colorado, on June 28, 2016.

Writer-director Mark Levinson has been awarded the Sundance Institutute/Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship for his adaptation of Richard Powers’s novel The Gold Bug Variations. The award recognizes “the most promising new independent films about science and technology.”

Writer/Director Mark Levinson (Particle Fever) is working on a new project: a script based on Powers’s novel The Gold Bug Variations. It was was selected for the Sundance Institute 2016 January Screenwriters Lab.
Levinson’s adaptation of The Gold Bug Variations also won the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.

Orfeo made the the longlist for the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award, “International Dublin Literary Award longlist announced,” The Irish Times, November 9, 2015. “The prize could, finally, witness the long over due emergence of Richard Powers nominated here for a dazzling puzzle, Orfeo.”

“Classical Connections: Fiction for Music Lovers,” by Liam Cagney, Sinfini Music, November 5, 2015. “Walking the line between highbrow and thriller … it’s hard to deny that Orfeo’s an appealing read for musicophiles.”

Galatea 2.0 made the list of “10 Fabulous Campus Novels to Cozy Up With This Fall,” by Maddie Crum, Huffington Post, September 24, 2015. “Powers’s novel is as fascinating as its premise: a professor with writer’s block teams up with a computer scientist in an attempt to build a computer that can write a book indistinguishable from a work by a human. The result, “Helen,” isn’t quite as quippy as the ScarJo-voiced robot in “Her,” but she’s capable of feigning — or, perhaps, truly understanding — human emotion.“