Reynolds Price

Writer and teacher Reynolds Price A native of North Carolina, Price has written works known for their sense of place and off-beat characters. He's a prolific and a varied writer: he 's written short stories, poems, plays, and essays, and since the publication of his first novel, "A Long and Happy Life," in 1962, he's published more than two dozen books. In 1984 Price was diagnosed with spinal cancer, and became paralyzed from the waist down. Cancer, though, didn't slow his writing down.

Novelist Richard Price suffered from spinal cancer; surgery left him wheelchair-bound. Instead of taking pain medicine, he opted for hypnosis, which stirred long-forgotten memories of his early life. He turned those recollections into a new memoir, called Clear Pictures.