# Richard Price (writer)
**Richard Price** (born 1949 in New York) is an American novelist and screenwriter known for crime fiction set in the poor urban neighborhoods of the United States, including *The Wanderers* (1974), *Clockers* (1992), and *Lush Life* (2008), and for screenplays such as *The Color of Money*, *Sea of Love*, and *Ransom*[1](https://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20260206/11459875/richard-price-bcnegra-literatura-harlem.html) • [2](https://us.macmillan.com/author/richardprice). He has also written for the television dramas *The Wire*, *The Night Of*, and *The Deuce*[2](https://us.macmillan.com/author/richardprice). His tenth novel, *Lazarus Man*, appeared in November 2024, his first novel in sixteen years[3](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96040-richard-price-s-true-grit.html) • [4](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/lazarus-man-richard-price-book-review/680397/).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | New York, 1949[1](https://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20260206/11459875/richard-price-bcnegra-literatura-harlem.html) |
| Debut | *The Wanderers*, 1974, published when he was twenty-four; a streetwise story of a teenage Bronx greaser gang[5](https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-with-richard-price/) • [6](https://wnyc.org/story/258466-scrappy-wunderkind-bronx-projects-author-richard-price-readers-almanac-1978/) |
| Best-known novel | *Clockers* (1992), about cops and crack dealers in the fictional Dempsey, N.J.; filmed by Spike Lee in 1995 with Harvey Keitel and John Turturro[3](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96040-richard-price-s-true-grit.html) • [7](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/richard-price-10656/) |
| Screenplays | *The Color of Money* (Academy Award nomination, Best Adapted Screenplay), *Sea of Love*, *Ransom*, *Mad Dog and Glory*, *Kiss of Death*[2](https://us.macmillan.com/author/richardprice) • [8](https://freshairarchive.org/segments/novelist-richard-price-0) |
| Television | Writer on HBO's *The Wire*, *The Night Of*, and *The Deuce*[2](https://us.macmillan.com/author/richardprice) |
| Latest novel | *Lazarus Man* (FSG, November 2024), set in East Harlem after a tenement collapse[3](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96040-richard-price-s-true-grit.html) • [9](https://apnews.com/article/5b5e7343b13631cb258f6c0cc4f386e7) |
| Translations | His nine previous novels have been translated into more than 15 languages[3](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96040-richard-price-s-true-grit.html) |
## Early life and debut
Price grew up in a housing project in the Bronx[8](https://freshairarchive.org/segments/novelist-richard-price-0). He published his first novel, *The Wanderers*, in 1974, when he was just twenty-four years old[5](https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-with-richard-price/). The book, a streetwise story of a teenage Bronx greaser gang, made him a literary celebrity[6](https://wnyc.org/story/258466-scrappy-wunderkind-bronx-projects-author-richard-price-readers-almanac-1978/) • [10](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/richard-prices-street-life). Three more novels followed in his early career: *Bloodbrothers*, *Ladies' Man*, and *The Breaks*[7](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/richard-price-10656/). In a 1978 radio interview timed to *Ladies' Man*, his third novel, he was described as the scrappy wunderkind of the Bronx projects[6](https://wnyc.org/story/258466-scrappy-wunderkind-bronx-projects-author-richard-price-readers-almanac-1978/).
## Screenwriting and the return to fiction
**Hollywood years.** After his early novels, Price turned largely to screenplays, writing *The Color of Money* and *Sea of Love*; he also scripted the Martin Scorsese-directed Michael Jackson video for "Bad"[5](https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-with-richard-price/). *The Color of Money*, directed by Scorsese, brought him a nomination for the [Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay](https://www.edgepedia.org/academy-award-for-best-adapted-screenplay)[2](https://us.macmillan.com/author/richardprice). His other film credits include *Ransom*, *Mad Dog and Glory*, and *Kiss of Death*[2](https://us.macmillan.com/author/richardprice) • [8](https://freshairarchive.org/segments/novelist-richard-price-0). In a 2007 interview he described the pull of the trade plainly: screenwriting "is its own crack. It involves other people, which is very seductive to an isolated novelist. There's a lot of money. I became seduced by that, and the worst thing you could do is get good at it"[11](https://www.bookcritics.org/2008/02/29/richard-price-in-conversation-part-1/).
The road back to fiction ran through police work. While writing the script for *Sea of Love*, a police movie about which he knew nothing, he discovered "what you see of the world when you have a police escort," and became obsessed with seeing human behavior in extremis[11](https://www.bookcritics.org/2008/02/29/richard-price-in-conversation-part-1/). He had also gone through his own 1980s cocaine habit and was teaching writing at a rehab center in the Bronx, where he saw the devastation of the crack era firsthand[11](https://www.bookcritics.org/2008/02/29/richard-price-in-conversation-part-1/).
## Clockers and the urban novels
*Clockers* (1992) is the book on which Price's later reputation rests. He spent four years with dealers and cops on the streets of urban America researching its raw material[7](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/richard-price-10656/), and the time he spent in Jersey City in the late 1980s directly inspired the novel[10](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/richard-prices-street-life). The book is set in the fictional Dempsey, New Jersey, a city to which he would return in later works, and re-creates its pained, often ambivalent relationship with the crack-cocaine epidemic and the over-policing used to tame the crisis[3](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96040-richard-price-s-true-grit.html) • [10](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/richard-prices-street-life). [Spike Lee](https://www.edgepedia.org/spike-lee) filmed it in 1995, starring [Harvey Keitel](https://www.edgepedia.org/harvey-keitel) and [John Turturro](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-turturro)[7](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/richard-price-10656/).
A run of urban novels followed. *Freedomland* (1998) and *Samaritan* (2003) continued his portrait of inner-city America; *Samaritan* concerns a man who, like Price, grew up in a housing project and became a successful writer, returning to his New Jersey hometown to teach and to help, with consequences that turn dangerous[8](https://freshairarchive.org/segments/novelist-richard-price-0). *Lush Life* (2008), his eighth novel, unfolds on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a place Price called "the most important slum in American history"[12](https://newrepublic.com/article/62100/the-tnr-qa-richard-price).
## The Wire and television
Before *Clockers* was published, Price's editor at Houghton Mifflin, John Sterling, introduced him to [David Simon](https://www.edgepedia.org/david-simon), another writer on his roster[10](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/richard-prices-street-life). Simon, creator of HBO's *The Wire*, used *Clockers* as inspiration for his series, and Price became a writer on it[3](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96040-richard-price-s-true-grit.html). *The Wire* drew its episode writers largely from outside television, including the crime novelists George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, and Price[13](https://sites.middlebury.edu/thewire09/contexts/context-television/). Price later wrote for two more HBO-adjacent dramas, *The Night Of* and *The Deuce*[2](https://us.macmillan.com/author/richardprice).
## Lazarus Man and the later career
*Lazarus Man* (FSG, November 12, 2024) is Price's first novel in nearly ten years and, by *The Atlantic*'s count, his tenth[3](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96040-richard-price-s-true-grit.html) • [4](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/lazarus-man-richard-price-book-review/680397/). The story opens with a five-story tenement in [East Harlem](https://www.edgepedia.org/east-harlem) collapsing into a hill of rubble, killing dozens and coating the street with ash[9](https://apnews.com/article/5b5e7343b13631cb258f6c0cc4f386e7) • [14](https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/richardprice). Its main characters are Royal Davis, a funeral home owner chasing tragedies for bodies; Mary Roe, a city detective on the community affairs beat; Felix Pearl, a twenty-something photographer new to the city; and Anthony Carter, a middle-aged, unemployed man six months sober, found alive in the ruins days after the explosion, who becomes the novel's title character[9](https://apnews.com/article/5b5e7343b13631cb258f6c0cc4f386e7). The Associated Press review notes that Price's screenwriting experience shows as he hops from character to character, sometimes offering only a paragraph or two on each before moving on[9](https://apnews.com/article/5b5e7343b13631cb258f6c0cc4f386e7).
**Method and temperament.** Price told *The Atlantic* he is on a "hunt for moments," snapshots in time and fleeting interactions that reveal someone in a startling new light: "I've got like X-ray eyes for the little gestures that go right by everybody. I don't go for the big picture so much as a lot of little big pictures"[4](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/lazarus-man-richard-price-book-review/680397/). The same review describes *Lazarus Man* as a trauma novel without a trauma plot, animated by what it calls unreconstructed, unembarrassed humanism, and notes that Price, a white novelist writing yet again about Black urban life, betrays no signs of racial anxiety[4](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/lazarus-man-richard-price-book-review/680397/). Despite bestselling books, awards, film adaptations, and critical acclaim, he typically works seven days a week and admits he does not enjoy writing all that much[3](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96040-richard-price-s-true-grit.html). In a January 2025 Guardian interview he put it more bluntly: "I don't like to write, I just don't, it's too much anxiety"[15](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jan/11/richard-price-lazarus-man-novel-the-wire).
Price lives in Manhattan with his wife, the novelist Lorraine Adams[2](https://us.macmillan.com/author/richardprice).
## References
1. [Richard Price: "Si recurres a los clichés, mereces que te manden a la guillotina", La Vanguardia](https://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20260206/11459875/richard-price-bcnegra-literatura-harlem.html)
2. [Richard Price, Authors, Macmillan](https://us.macmillan.com/author/richardprice)
3. [Richard Price's True Grit, Publishers Weekly](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/96040-richard-price-s-true-grit.html)
4. [Richard Price's Radical, Retrograde Novel, The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/lazarus-man-richard-price-book-review/680397/)
5. [An Interview with Richard Price, The Believer](https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-with-richard-price/)
6. [The Scrappy Wunderkind of the Bronx Projects: Author Richard Price on Reader's Almanac, 1978, WNYC](https://wnyc.org/story/258466-scrappy-wunderkind-bronx-projects-author-richard-price-readers-almanac-1978/)
7. [Richard Price, Bloomsbury Publishing UK](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/richard-price-10656/)
8. [Novelist Richard Price, Fresh Air Archive, January 7, 2003](https://freshairarchive.org/segments/novelist-richard-price-0)
9. [Book Review: Richard Price returns with another portrait of urban America, 'Lazarus Man', AP News](https://apnews.com/article/5b5e7343b13631cb258f6c0cc4f386e7)
10. [Richard Price's Street Life, The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/richard-prices-street-life)
11. [Richard Price, in Conversation (Part 1), National Book Critics Circle](https://www.bookcritics.org/2008/02/29/richard-price-in-conversation-part-1/)
12. [The TNR Q&A: Richard Price, The New Republic](https://newrepublic.com/article/62100/the-tnr-qa-richard-price)
13. [Context: Television, Watching The Wire 2009 archive, Middlebury College](https://sites.middlebury.edu/thewire09/contexts/context-television/)
14. [Richard Price, New York State Writers Institute](https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/richardprice)
15. [Richard Price: 'I don't like to write, I just don't, it's too much anxiety', The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jan/11/richard-price-lazarus-man-novel-the-wire)
---
*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Writers and literary biographies › Fiction writers: novelists and genre › American literary novelists › Mid-20th century writers › Surnames M to Y*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license