His first novel, Morte d'Urban, won the 1963 National Book Award for Fiction.

He took English and philosophy courses at Wright Junior College and at Northwestern University in Chicago, but did not earn a degree.

His work has long been admired for its gentle satire and its astonishing ability to recreate with a few words the insular but gradually changing world of post-World War II American Catholicism.

After moving back and forth from Ireland, he settled with his family in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he taught creative writing and English literature at Saint John's University.

Sister Mariella Gable, OSB, a member of the College of Saint Benedict English faculty, sent him the sample and Powers asked to meet the writer.