"[2][3] He was the son of Florence (née Taylor), a homemaker, and Earl Banks, a plumber, and was raised in Barnstead, New Hampshire.

Supportive of his writing, the Gunst family paid for him to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during their early marriage; he graduated in 1967.

[5][6][7] In Chapel Hill, Banks was involved in Students for a Democratic Society and protest during the Civil Rights Movement.

He was briefly mentioned in philosopher Richard Rorty's 1996 future history essay "Fraternity Reigns" in The New York Times Magazine.

Rorty referred to him as having written a 2021 novel, Trampling the Vineyards, describing it as "samizdat" because of the political repression envisioned in the philosopher's speculative essay.

His main works include the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction.

His 2004 novel The Darling is largely set in Liberia and deals with the racial and political experience of the white American narrator.

[19] In 2023, it was confirmed that Paul Schrader would write and direct Oh, Canada, an adaptation of Banks's novel, Foregone, starring Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi.

[20] According to Robert Faggen in The Paris Review, Banks's debut novel, Family Life, "was not a critical success".

His next volume, a collection of short stories called Searching for Survivors, won Banks an O. Henry Award.

Reviewers have appreciated his portrayal of the working-class people struggling to overcome destructive relationships, poverty, drug abuse, and spiritual confusion.

Christine Benvenuto commented that "Banks writes with an intensely focused empathy and a compassionate sense of humor that help to keep readers, if not his characters, afloat through the misadventures and outright tragedies of his books.