Perhaps it's his facility with imagery that has made Banks' works translate so well to film. In recent years, adaptations of his novels The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction have garnered critical success and widespread recognition, including three top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival for The Sweet Hereafter.

Banks will be reading and discussing his novels and short stories Feb. 27 at San José State University as part of the university's Center for Literary Arts Major Author Series. Recently Banks talked with Steppin' Out about his works by phone from his home in upstate New York.

"It's a necessity that I myself have to be able to see what I'm writing, and I do," says Banks of his writing style. "I visualize very clearly what I'm writing for myself, and I think that's the key—if I can't see it, how can I expect the reader to see it? I know what the room looks like, and where the door is, and where everything is in it. It isn't obscure to me. I really do visualize very clearly. I think, probably, I have a visual imagination."

Fueling that imagination is Banks' background in the visual arts. "I originally wanted to be a painter, an artist, and as a kid I had an obvious talent at that, in the way that with music and math and, I think, visual arts, if you have a talent for it, it tends to manifest itself very early in life, at least in a way that people can see and recognize," he says. "I had that particular gift long before any other gift made itself known to me, and I really did think of myself as an artist until I was around 21, 22 years old—before I thought of myself as a writer."

As evidenced by his image-rich writing, Banks hasn't ever really given up that first love. Additionally, he has kept up painting as a hobby and has parlayed his affinity for the visual arts in another direction: film. "I still draw and paint in an amateurish way—I mean, just for my own amusement," Banks says. "But I've gotten very involved in visual arts, if you consider film a visual art, and I do. I'm involved in writing and producing films, too, and I think that satisfies that impulse, that visual impulse in some real ways."

Banks' picture-perfect ability to set a scene applies just as readily to how his characters are realized: There's nothing ambiguous about what drives them or about who they are. Although Banks says he can't really choose a favorite character among all those he has created, he says, "I confess I'm especially fond of a couple of characters who happen to be adolescents. In The Sweet Hereafter, the kid, Nichole Burnell, who's in the wheelchair and survives the school bus accident and tells a part of the story. Then there's the kid Bone from Rule of the Bone. They still remain very much in my imagination, probably because they are adolescents and their lives are yet to unfold, and I still think about what kind of an adult she would become, what kind of an adult he would become."

Because Banks' writing draws on such realism, the hard looks he gives certain issues, in particular those of class, have made his works known for themes that may be considered dark or bleak. But Banks' stories are often in some way hopeful in the human resilience that they portray. "I think I'm moved most by the courage people show in the face of suffering," says Banks. "Suffering in life is unavoidable, and when people face that suffering and deal with it courageously, I'm profoundly moved, and that happens often enough that I stay moved and I stay inspired, even as I grow older."

Banks currently is adapting his novel Continental Drift for a film, adapting his novel Cloudsplitter for HBO, and adapting Trailerpark, a book of his short stories, for a series on HBO that he will also produce. In addition, he's working on another novel.

Russell Banks speaks Feb. 27 at San José State University. Admission is free. For more information, call 408.924.4600 or visit www.sjsu.edu/depts/litart.