“David Adams Richards was born in Newcastle, New Brunswick, in 1950, and is the author of fourteen novels, a book of short stories, and five books of nonfiction. The Washington Post called his novel Mercy Among the Children ‘a contemporary masterpiece ... in the ... tradition of Tolstoy, Camus and Melville.’ The Globe and Mail, called a recent book of nonfiction, God Is, ‘an unconventional prose-poem in three movements, extolling plain speaking about the mysterious moments that transformed the child born lame on the left side and who became the drinking companion of arsonists, thieves, drug dealers and murderers, into the mature writer too often called our Tolstoy and too rarely our Blake.’ Whether we call him our Tolstoy, Camus, Melville, or Blake, we are delighted to call this year’s winner of the Matt Cohen Award simply our David Adams Richards.”
— 2011 Matt Cohen Award Committee (Patsy Aldana, Graeme Gibson, and Wayne Grady)

“In a career spanning three decades, David Adams Richards has created a body of work remarkable for its consistency, passion, and power. While his novelist’s eye has always remained firmly fixed on the landscape and people of his native New Brunswick, his tragic-comic vision transforms these particulars into a profound universal drama focussed on the meaning of human dignity and morality.”
— 2004 Timothy Findley Award Jury (Bill Gaston, Susan Swan, and Guy Vanderhaeghe)