Author Kevin Powers Discusses Creative Struggles and Literary Inspirations

Kevin Powers: ‘I was ready to abandon Infinite Jest a thousand times’

The American author on falling in love with The Great Gatsby, being inspired by Dylan Thomas – and the memoir of a canoe trip in Texas he comes back to My earliest reading memory The deaths of Old Dan and Little Ann in Wilson Rawls’s Where the Red Fern Grows were etched into my being as a first grader in Chesterfield County, Virginia. My favourite book growing up Stephen King’s The Stand. I completely lost myself in the story. I don’t think I realised at the time what a rare gift it is to hav...

By Kevin Powers