Biography of Reynolds Price
Reynolds Price is an acclaimed novelist, biblical scholar, poet, and beloved teacher at Duke University. He has clearly had, by prescient luck, hard work, destiny, and maybe divine gift, an actual "Long and Happy Life," the title of his first novel in 1961.
After graduating from Duke in 1955, he went to Merton College as a Rhodes Scholar and wrote his thesis on Milton's Samson Agonistes. Later in life, he wrote, with his friend singer James Taylor, the lyrics to the songs "Copperline" and "New Hymn." In his role of biblical and ancient language scholar, he wrote his own translation and interpretation of the gospels of Mark and John.
Price's range is vast---novels, poetry, essays, children's books, stage plays, NPR commentaries, and memoirs. His more than 30 books include: A Generous Man, The Surface of Earth, Blue Calhoun, A Serious Way of Wondering: The Ethics of Jesus Imagined, Vital Provisions (poems), The Good Priest's Son, and A Whole New Life, a memoir published in 1994 describing his survival of spinal cancer.
His prizes include the National Book Critics Circle Award for Kate Vaiden in 1986 and a William Faulkner Foundation Award. In addition, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Clear Pictures and was selected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Eudora Welty was an early fan of his work, and she remained one of his closest friends throughout her life.
Born in Warren County in eastern North Carolina, Price is a true product of the Depression-his parents lost the family's home because they could not borrow $50. He now lives outside Durham, near Chapel Hill, in a house full of art-Russian icons, paintings, books, photographs of famous contemporaries and other memorable friends-where for many years he wrote his books longhand in a cork-lined study. His work is honest and clear, elegant when it should be, often poignant and funny, and all of it a treasure that is North Carolina's literary good fortune.