Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He has published eight novels and four collections of stories, including The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and the New York Times bestseller, Canada. Independence Daywas awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first time the same book had won both prizes. Let Me Be Frank with You was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, and most recently was awarded the Prix Femina Étranger in France and the Princess of Asturias Prize for Literature in Spain. Richard Ford lives in Maine with his wife.

'The god of small stories . A set of polished gems from a master craftsman' Sunday Times

'He writes about human beings and their disappointments with unfailing insight' Observer

'Finely crafted' Mail on Sunday

'American master' Daily Telegraph

A woman and man, parted a quarter of a century, reunite in a bar in New Orleans as the St Patrick's Day parade goes by. A divorced suburban dad helps his daughter pick out a card for her friend who's moving away. A group of friends in late middle age, all once promising, reunite for dinner when one of their number loses her husband, but the gathering splinters when bitter revelations about their shared past emerge. Two teenage boys sit in a drive-in, the air thick with the scent of gin and popcorn and longing.

A visionary collection of luminous landscapes, of great moments in small lives, of the people we carry with us long after they are gone, Sorry for Your Trouble takes disappointment, ageing, grief, love and marriage and silhouettes them against the heady backdrop of Irish America in the past and present. Earthily humane and profoundly wise, the collection reconfirms its author as the master of contemporary American fiction.

The god of small stories . A set of polished gems from a master craftsman . The prose is terse, the craftsmanship, as always, fine. The reader feels cradled in the capable hands of an expert

I can't think of many other writers, living or dead, who have given me so many reasons over the years to slow down on the page and pay attention

One of the great masters of American literature

He writes about human beings and their disappointments with unfailing insight and, while he never mocks his characters, is keenly aware of the absurdity involved in being alive . Sorry for Your Trouble , is exemplary in its nuanced understanding of the relationships between men and women

Finely crafted

American master

Late style, in Ford, is loose-limbed, allusive, jokey in a rueful way, and mutedly elegiac . A marvellous writer

As you read Richard Ford, the harder you look, the sadder and funnier it gets

Work of understated power, intelligence and not a little mischief, but one that leaves one wanting - craving - more

The incomparable Mississippian Richard Ford is a great writer, no question about that. More importantly, he is a great American writer. Throughout his novels and short stories, as well as his astute critical reading of literature, he has fulfilled the main objective of art: the exploration of the self. He has also consistently chiselled away, ever closer to the heart of the United States . He is a writer who has nailed exactly what it is to be alive - no mean feat - and to be alive in the US

His journalistic eye for the revealing detail, his knack for tracing the connections between the public and the personal, his gift for capturing the precariousness of daily life