Richard Price (writer)

Novelist

Birthday October 12, 1949

Birth Sign Libra

Birthplace The Bronx, New York City, United States

Age 74 years old

Nationality United States

#47606 Most Popular

1949

Richard Price (born October 12, 1949) is an American novelist and screenwriter, known for the books The Wanderers (1974), Clockers (1992) and Lush Life (2008).

Price's novels explore late-20th-century urban America in a gritty, realistic manner that has brought him considerable literary acclaim.

Several of his novels are set in a fictional northern New Jersey city called Dempsy.

Price has also written screenplays for television dramas such as The Wire, The Outsider, The Night Of, and The Deuce.

1967

He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1967 and obtained a B.A. from Cornell University and an MFA from Columbia University.

He also did graduate work at Stanford University.

1974

Price's first novel was The Wanderers (1974), a coming-of-age story set in the Bronx in 1962, written when Price was 24 years old.

1979

It was adapted into a film in 1979, with a screenplay by Rose Kaufman and Philip Kaufman and directed by the latter.

1986

For writing The Color of Money (1986), a feature film directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the 1984 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis, Price received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Price was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Harriet (Rosenbaum) and Milton Price, a window dresser.

A self-described "lower middle class Jewish kid", he grew up in a housing project in the northeast Bronx.

Price has written numerous screenplays, including The Color of Money (1986) (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Life Lessons (the Martin Scorsese segment of New York Stories) (1989), Sea of Love (1989), Mad Dog and Glory (1993), Ransom (1996), and Shaft (2000).

1992

His novel Clockers, published in 1992, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

1993

He also served as executive producer on the film Ethan Frome (1993).

Price wrote and conceptualized the 18-minute music video for Michael Jackson's "Bad".

1995

In 1995, it was adapted into a film directed by Spike Lee; Price and Lee shared writing credits for the screenplay.

1999

In 1999, he received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Arts and Letters Award in Literature.

2007

Price did uncredited work on the film American Gangster (2007).

2008

In his review of Price's novel Lush Life (2008), Walter Kirn compared Price to Raymond Chandler and Saul Bellow.

He also wrote for the HBO series The Wire, winning the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2008 ceremony for his work on the fifth season of the series.

2009

He was inducted into the Academy in 2009.

Price lives in Harlem in New York City, and is married to the journalist and author Lorraine Adams.

2010

In July 2010, a group art show inspired by Lush Life was held in nine galleries in New York City.

Price wrote a detective novel entitled The Whites under the pen name Harry Brandt.

2012

He created a police drama series NYC 22 in 2012, it was cancelled after one season.

2015

The book was released February 17, 2015.

Film producer Scott Rudin will be producing a film version of the novel.

He wrote the screenplay for the film Child 44, which was released in April 2015.

2016

His eight-part HBO miniseries The Night Of premiered in July 2016.

2017

Also premiering on HBO, in September 2017, was the series The Deuce—co-written and executive produced by Price.

2020

He acts as the showrunner for the 2020 HBO miniseries The Outsider, based on a novel by Stephen King.

Price is often cast in cameo roles in the films he writes.

He has published articles in The New York Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone and others.

He has taught writing at Binghamton University, Hofstra University, Columbia University, Yale University, and New York University.