Ron Powers (born 1941) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, novelist, and non-fiction writer. His works include White Town Drowsing: Journeys to Hannibal, Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain, and Mark Twain: A Life. With James Bradley, he co-wrote the 2000 #1 New York Times Bestseller Flags of Our Fathers.

Powers won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1973 for his critical writing as TV-radio-columnist for Chicago Sun-Times about television during 1972.^{[1] [2]} He was the first television critic to win the Pulitzer Prize.^[3]

In 1985, Powers won an Emmy Award for his work on CBS News Sunday Morning.^[3]

[edit] Personal/influence

Powers was born in 1941 in Hannibal, Missouri — Mark Twain's hometown. ^[4] Hannibal was influential in much of Powers' writing ^[4] — as the subject of his book White Town Drowsing, as the location of the two true-life murders that are the subject of Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore, and as the home of Mark Twain. Powers has said that his fascination with Twain — the subject of two of his books — began in childhood:

"When I was a little boy in Hannibal, he was a mystic figure to me. His pictures and books and images were all over (my friend) Dulany Winkler's house, and I spent a lot of time there. I just wanted to reach out and touch him. Eventually I was able to."^[5]

In addition to writing, Powers has taught for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Salzburg Seminar in Salzburg, Austria, and at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

Powers is married and has two sons. He currently resides in Castleton, Vermont.

[edit] Bibliography

• Newscasters: The News Business As Show Business. St. Martins Press. 1979. ISBN 0312572085. 

• White Town Drowsing: Journeys to Hannibal. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press. 1986. ISBN 087113103X. 

• The Beast, the Eunuch, and the Glass-Eyed Child: Television in the 80s. Harcourt. 1990. ISBN 031226240X. 

• Far From Home: Life and Loss in Two American Towns. Random House. 1991. ISBN 0394570340. 

• The Cruel Radiance Notes of a Prosewriter in a Visual Age. Middlebury College Press. 1994. 

• Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain. New York: Da Capo Press. 1999. ISBN 0-306-81086-7. 

• Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore: Childhood and Murder in the Heart of America. St. Martin's Press. 2001. ISBN 0-312-26240-X. 

• Mark Twain: A Life. Free Press. 2005. ISBN 0743248996. 

Co-authored

• James Bradley and Ron Powers (2000). Flag of Our Fathers. Bantam. ISBN 0553111337. 

• Robert Morgan and Ron Powers (2001). The Man Who Flew the Memphis Belle: Memoir of a WWII Bomber Pilot. Dutton Adult. ISBN 0525946101. 

• John Baldwin and Ron Powers (2007). Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship. Crown Publishers. ISBN 9780307236555. 

[edit] References