American writer Richard Ford has won the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, the Princess of Asturias Foundation of Spain reported on Wednesday.

Richard Ford was born in Jackson, the United States in 1944 and graduated with a degree in literature from Michigan State University in 1966. He wrote several novels such as The Ultimate Good Luck (1981), the Sportswriter (1986), Wildlife (1990), and Canada (2012).

The foundation described Ford's characters as "ordinary people living conventional lives who find themselves entangled in complex situations" and said some considered Ford "the rightful heir to Hemingway."

He is member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), among other distinctions, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Independence Day (1996).

This is the sixth of eight Princess of Asturias Awards announced this year. The Award for International Cooperation will be announced next week and the Award for Concord is to be announced in September.

The Princess of Asturias Awards aim to recognize the technical, scientific, social, cultural and humanitarian work carried out by people, groups and institutions around the world.

The prize will be presented by the Queen and King of Spain in Asturias city of Oviedo in the fall. Endit

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