A Writer's Life of Teaching

When Reynolds Price was at Oxford University he received a letter offering him a teaching job at Duke. He was thrilled to return to his alma mater, though the letter sternly warned it was just a three-year position.

"That seemed a little discouraging, but I thought, ‘Well, three years is three years,'" Price says. During those three years, he wrote his first novel -- A Long and Happy Life, which won the William Faulkner Award - and was asked to stay on. He has been at Duke ever since, writing more novels, poetry, translations, essays and memoirs.

Price, the James B. Duke Professor of English, will be honored for 50 years of teaching at Duke with a jubilee Jan. 31-Feb. 2. One of the highlights of the celebration is a Feb. 2 appearance by writer Toni Morrison at Duke Chapel. The event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Registration for the rest of the events is closed, except for Duke students, who may attend for free and without registering in advance. 

Price will introduce Morrison, a novelist, critic and lecturer specializing in African-American literature. In addition to the Nobel Prize for Literature, she also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for the novel Beloved and the National Book Critics Award in 1977 for Song of Solomon.

"Toni's been a good friend for 30 years or so," Price says. "I'm looking forward to seeing a great many old friends and former students and classmates."

A native of North Carolina and a 1955 summa cum laude graduate of Duke, Price was a Rhodes Scholar and studied in Oxford, England, with W.H. Auden and Lord David Cecil. He returned to the United States and began teaching at Duke in 1958.

For many years, Price has taught courses on creative writing and the work of 17th-century English poet John Milton, as well as a course on the Gospels in which students write their own version of a Gospel story.

Duke senior Teshonne N. Powell took both of Price's courses in the spring of 2007 as part of her English major.

"He effortlessly gives his knowledge about different aspects of life, and he always connects the literature to life and modern culture," Powell says. "There's a sense of wisdom but also a sense of youthfulness in his voice. I could listen to him talk for hours."