Center for the literary arts in New York State
THE BARD OF URBAN STREET LIFE
Richard Price
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 1, 2025
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222 See map.
Richard Price, celebrated author of Clockers (adapted as a movie directed by Spike Lee), and a key screenwriter for HBO’s "The Wire," is a renowned author of gritty crime fiction set in the devastated neighborhoods of America’s cities.
His new novel, Lazarus Man (Nov. 2024), recounts the aftermath of a catastrophe in Harlem: a five-story tenement collapses into a hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city’s rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. Publishers Weekly said, “Price once again proves he’s the bard of New York City street life.”
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI) and the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project, and the School of Criminal Justice’s “Justice and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century Project.”
Reviews of Lazarus Man
Half a century after launching an astonishing career that includes some of the best crime writing for books and screens, Price has let the mercy in his stories rise to the surface. On the margins, bullets still fly and drugs still flow, but the deadly alleys of Clockers and "The Wire" give way here to a community just trying to account for its dead and find a way forward... For a nation riven and terrified, Lazarus Man is the strangest of urban thrillers: a thoughtful, even peaceful story about stumbling into new life...Presented in two long sections with a preface and an afterword, the novel remains in relentless motion."
— Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Gritty and compassionate... [Price] has an ear for streetwise dialogue and an eye for description...A chorus of voices enlivens every page in a kind of urban opera."
— Leigh Haber, The Los Angeles Times
"Price delivers a remarkable excavation of urban angst in this story of a five-story East Harlem tenement building that collapses . . . As [Price's] vivid characters cross paths following the tragedy, they compose a searing snapshot of contemporary Harlem annotated with the author’s precise observations . . . Price once again proves he’s the bard of New York City street life."
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Richard Price has long been lauded as an expert observer of urban life in the United States. Lazarus Man, a streetwise story of a small group of New Yorkers brought together unexpectedly by tragedy and the quest for redemption, will only enhance that reputation . . . With his keen eye, efficiently constructed scenes, and, above all, crisp dialogue...
[Price] follows the lives of these world-weary characters over the course of roughly 10 days, while artfully revealing the elements of their pasts that have brought them to this singular moment.”
— Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness
(Photo credit Lorraine Adams)