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Richard Price Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Richard Price
Photo: Ralph Gibson (2002)

Richard Price

Richard Price Biography

Richard Price, born in the Bronx, graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1967 and obtained a BA from Cornell University and an MFA from Columbia. He also did graduate work at Stanford. He has taught writing at Columbia, Yale, and New York University.

Price is the author of nine novels, most recently The Whites, originally published under the pseudonym Harry Brandt. His other novels include Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan. In 1999 he received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2007 he won an Edgar Award for his writing on the HBO series The Wire. His miniseries The Night Of was premiered on HBO in July 2016.

His fiction, articles and essays have appeared in Best American Essays 2002, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. He has also written numerous screenplays, including Sea of Love, Ransom, and The Color of Money.



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Interview

A Q&A with Richard Price about his current projects - both novels and script writing - and his 2008 novel, Lush Life.

Reprinted, with permission, from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Has anyone in recent memory written such complex, insightful and entertaining novels about urban life in America as Richard Price? Those who have their doubts should read Lush Life, Price's most recent novel - now out in paperback.

Like Clockers (1992) and his two other books set in fictional Dempsey, N.J. - Freedomland (1998) and Samaritan (2002) - Lush Life paints a richly textured portrait of city dwellers that would make Balzac and Dickens proud: The novel is populated with quick-witted cops, underprivileged teenage criminals, ethically challenged officials, and overworked and long-suffering average joes.

After the Dempsey novels, Lush Life marks a return to New York City, as it were, for Price, a 59-year-old native of the Bronx whose first novel, The Wanderers (1974), portrayed gang life in that borough. Lush Life is set on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the old, largely Jewish immigrant neighborhood where Price's grandparents lived - and which today is a popular slumming spot for a young, mostly white crowd.

The novel centers on a late-night homicide in the neighborhood, and the police investigation into the crime. But the story...

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Books by this Author

Books by Richard Price at BookBrowse
Lazarus Man jacket The Whites jacket Lush Life jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Richard Price but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • John Burdett

    John Burdett

    John Burdett is a nonpracticing lawyer who worked in Hong Kong for a British firm until he found his true vocation as a writer. Since then, he has lived in France and Spain, and Thailand and is now back in Hong Kong. His ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Lush Life

    Try:
    Bangkok Tattoo
    by John Burdett

  • Vikram Chandra

    Vikram Chandra

    Vikram Chandra was born in 1961 in New Delhi. and completed most of his secondary education at Mayo College, a boarding school in Ajmer, Rajasthan. After a short stay at St. Xavier's College in Mumbai, he came to the ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Lush Life

    Try:
    Sacred Games
    by Vikram Chandra

We recommend 5 similar authors

View all 5 Read-Alikes

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