David Adams Richards, CM, ONB (born 17 October 1950) is a Canadian novelist, essayist, screenwriter and poet.
Born in Newcastle, New Brunswick, Richards left St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, three credits shy of completing a B.A.. Richards has been a writer-in-residence at various universities and colleges across Canada, including the University of New Brunswick. He is currently the Artist in Residence at St. Thomas University.
Richards has received numerous awards including 2 Gemini Awards for scriptwriting for Small Gifts and "For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down", the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the Canadian Authors Association Award for his novel Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace. Richards is one of only three writers to have won in both the fiction and non-fiction categories of the Governor General's Award. He won the 1988 fiction award for Nights Below Station Street and the 1998 non-fiction award for Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi. He was also a co-winner of the 2000 Giller Prize for Mercy Among the Children. In 2009, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada "for his contributions to the Canadian literary scene as an essayist, screenwriter and writer of fiction and non-fiction". In 2011 he received the Matt Cohen Prize.
In 1971, he married the former Peggy McIntyre. They have two sons, John Thomas Richards and Anton Richards, and reside in Fredericton as of December 2012.
The Writers' Federation of New Brunswick administers an annual David Adams Richards Prize for Fiction.
Richards' papers are currently housed at the University of New Brunswick.
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“It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always. The conscience really does not, and ought not to monopolize the whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“...all enjoyment is dependent upon the frailty of human life and human desires ... if we were to have all we want and to live forever, all enjoyment would be gone.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)