'This is what you do'

“I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does,  You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.”  – Richard Price

 

Born in The Bronx, NY on Oct. 12, 1949 Price is perhaps best known for novels like Clockers and Lazarus Man (his newest out in 2024) and screenwriting efforts like The Color of Money., Not a writer to get pigeonholed into any particular genre, he also has written feature stories, magazine essays, and radio programs, and taught writing at Columbia, Yale and NYU.

 

Price earned degrees at Cornell and Columbia and also studied at Stanford before launching his successful writing career with The Wanderers, a coming-of-age story set in The Bronx and written when he was just 24 years old.   That book and Clockers also were adapted into movies.  

 

To date he has written 10 novels, 12 screenplays and 5 television screenplays.  His work has been praised for its blend of humor, suspense, dialogue, and character development.   The recipient of an American Arts & Letters Award and inductee into the American Arts & Letters Academy (in 2009), he lives and works in Harlem. 

 

“I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent,” he said.  “An artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.”