Southern novelist and man of letters Reynolds Price has been a distinguished figure in American literature since the 1962 publication of his first novel, A Long and Happy Life. With a distinct prose style and rich narrative voice that are firmly rooted in the language and rhythms of his native North Carolina, Price depicts a world of rural familiarity in which characters struggle with personal desires while trying to answer to family duties. Among his many novels, short stories, plays, poems, essays, translations, and memoirs are Kate Vaiden (1986), The Surface of Earth (1975), and the cancer memoir A Whole New Life (1994). Price has also collaborated on songs with singer/songwriter James Taylor, and broadcast personal commentaries on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. A graduate of Duke University and a Rhodes scholar, Price has taught in the English Department at Duke since 1958.

Further Reading:

Humphries, Jefferson, editor. Conversations with Reynolds Price. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1991.

Kimball, Sue Laslie, and Lynn Veach Sadler, editors. Reynolds Price: From "A Long and Happy Life" to "Good Hearts." Fayetteville, North Carolina, Methodist College Press, 1989.

Rooke, Constance. Reynolds Price. Boston, Twayne, 1983.

Schiff, James. Understanding Reynolds Price. Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1996.

Schiff, James, editor. Critical Essays on Reynolds Price. New York, G. K. Hall, 1998.