Editing Richard Powers (section)

===Early life===
One of five children, Powers was born in [[Evanston, Illinois|Evanston]], Illinois, the son of Richard Franklin Powers and his wife Donna Powers (née Belik).<ref>Linda De Roche: Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context, Santa Barbara, CA 2021, p. 970.</ref> His family later moved a few miles west to [[Lincolnwood, Illinois|Lincolnwood]], where his father was a local school [[principal (school)|principal]]. When Powers was 11, they moved to [[Bangkok]], [[Thailand]], where his father had accepted a position at [[International School Bangkok]], which Powers attended through his freshman year, ending in 1972. During that time outside the U.S., he developed skills in vocal music and proficiency in cello, guitar, saxophone, and clarinet.  He also became an avid reader, enjoying nonfiction primarily and classics such as the ''[[Iliad]]'' and the ''[[Odyssey]]''.

The family returned to the U.S. when Powers was 16. Following graduation in 1975 from [[DeKalb High School (Illinois)|DeKalb High School]] in [[DeKalb, Illinois|DeKalb]], Illinois, he enrolled at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign]] (UIUC) with a [[academic major|major]] in [[physics]], which he switched to [[English literature]] during his first semester. He earned a BA in 1978 and an [[Master of Arts|MA]] in Literature in 1980. He decided not to pursue a [[PhD]] partly because of his aversion to strict specialization, which had been one reason for his early transfer from physics to English, and partly because he had observed in graduate students and their professors a lack of pleasure in reading and writing (as portrayed in ''Galatea 2.2'').{{citation needed|date=October 2024}}