Richard Ford is considered one of the foremost American short story artists of today and is also a masterful novelist. His literary debut was with the novel A Piece of My Heart in 1976. After novel number two, The Ultimate Good Luck in 1981, he began writing for the magazine Inside Sports. When this magazine was sold, he decided to write about a sports journalist, which resulted in the novel The Sportswriter in 1986. For the novel Independence Day he was awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. This was the first time an author received both of these awards for one and the same book. Richard Ford’s work has been translated into 16 languages and of current interest this spring is the Norwegian translation of his novel Everything Could Be Worse.