Who is Richard Ford?

Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is a celebrated American novelist and short story writer.  He is perhaps best known for his 1986 novel The Sportswriter and its sequel Independence Day, which won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award.

Originally from Jackson, Mississippi, Ford attended Michigan State University from 1962-66, graduating with a degree in English. His first novel, A Piece of My Heart, was published in 1976, and since then he has authored a number of other works, including The Sportswriter and its two sequels, Independence Day and Lay of the Land, The Ultimate Good Luck, Wildlife, and a number of short stories, which are collected in Rock Springs and Women With Men.

Ford's writing has received great acclaim. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize for Independence Day, Ford received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1978, and won the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1995.

What is Special Collections?

Special Collections is the division of the MSU Libraries charged with housing rare material and special research collections. Established in 1962, Special Collections has been committed to preserving and providing access to important cultural heritage materials for over 50 years.

Today, MSU Special Collections holds nearly 500,000 printed works, extensive manuscript and archival collections, and a collection of ephemera supporting research in such fields as popular culture, radicalism, comic art, and gender.

Notable collections include the Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collection, one of the largest collections of its kind in the world, and the Radicalism Collection, which features primary material representing a wide range of political, social, and economic viewpoints. Special Collections also houses an extensive collection of rare books, including early veterinary medicine works , historical cookbooks, works related to European criminology, and modern American literature.