by Reynolds Price (Author)
Whether recounting events from his past or examining the details of his current experience as a writer, teacher, traveler, and general witness of the world, Reynolds Price shows us how a writer finds meaning in the day-to-day details of living. In this engaging collection of fifty-two personal essays originally aired on NPR's All Things Considered, Price explores topics that range from family and faith to capital punishment and his adventures while navigating an immensely inaccessible America in a wheelchair. Throughout, Price never loses sight of the origin or spirit of the essay -- in French, essayer means to try or attempt -- and each piece is a well-informed, revealing, often amusing and refreshing foray into a moment unlike any other we've shared with him.
Author Biography
Reynolds Price (1933-2011) was born in Macon, North Carolina. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University, he taught at Duke beginning in 1958 and was the James B. Duke Professor of English at the time of his death. His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.