Russell Banks is an award-winning fiction writer who set novels such as "Affliction" and "The Sweet Here After" in winter in the rural communities of his native Northeast.
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He imagines the dreams and downfalls of everyone from the modern blue-collar worker to the radical.
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Abolitionist John Brown dies. He is 82 years old.
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Banks, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, died Saturday in upstate New York, his editor Dan Halpern told The Associated Press.
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Banks is being treated for cancer, Halpern said.
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Joyce Carol Oates, on Twitter, called Banks a great American writer and a "dear friend to many."
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"I loved Russell and loved his incredible talent and great heart," Oates said.