Lorene Cary's new novel Pride (Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday, 1998;
Anchor 1999) is told in the voices of four friends-"subtle,
idiosyncratic characters...whose personalities seem utterly, and
affectingly, distinctive," according to The New York Times Book
Review. It also praises the book's ability to shift "between the
staccato directness of black slang and the more formal cadences of
standard English...."
The Price of A Child has been selected as the first city-wide One
Book, One Philadelphia choice. The novel traces one woman's escape
from slavery and brings alive Philadelphia's Underground Railroad
history. A New York Times reviewer called the writer "a powerful
storyteller, frankly sensual, mortally funny, gifted with an ear
for the pounce of real speech," and praised the novel as "a
generous, sardonic, full-blooded work of fiction." (Knopf, 1995;
Vintage 1996)
Cary's first book, published by Knopf in 1991, was Black Ice, a
memoir of her years first as a black female student, and then
teacher, at St. Paul's, an exclusive New England boarding school.
Arnold Rampersad has dubbed it "...probably the most beautifully
written and moving African-American autobiographical narrative
since Maya Angelou's celebrated I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings."
Black Ice was chosen as a Notable Book for 1992 by the American
Library Association.
Lorene Cary was graduated from St. Paul's School in 1974 and
received B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania
in 1978. She won a Thouron Fellowship for British-U.S. student
exchange and studied at Sussex University. She has received
Doctorates in Humane Letters from Colby College in Maine, Keene
State College in New Hampshire, and Chestnut Hill College in
Philadelphia.
In 1998 Lorene Cary founded Art Sanctuary, a non-profit lecture and
performance series that brings black thinkers and artists to speak
and perform at the Church of the Advocate, a National Historic
Landmark Building in North Philadelphia.
Currently a lecturer in creative writing at the University of
Pennsylvania, where she was a 1998 recipient of the Provost's Award
for Distinguished Teaching, Cary has lectured throughout the U.S.
She began writing as an apprentice at Time in 1980, then worked as
an Associate Editor at TV Guide, freelanced for such publications
as Essence, American Visions, Mirabella, and The Philadelphia
Inquirer Sunday Magazine, and served as Contributing Editor for
Newsweek in 1993.
In 2002, Cary received the Women's Way Agent of Change Award; in
2001 the Advocate Community Development Corporation's Award for
Urban Excellence; in 2000, a Philadelphia Historical Society
Founder's Medal for History in Culture; in 1999, the American Red
Cross Spectrum Rising Star Award for community service; and in
1995, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts Fellowship. She serves on the
usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary and the Union
Benevolent Association board. Cary is a member of PEN and the
Author's Guild. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, the
Rev. Robert C. Smith, and daughters Laura and Zoe.
"The Price of a Child is a book seared by a sense of mission ...
But there is nothing preachy about [Cary's] narrative style. She is
a powerful storyteller, frankly sensual, mortally funny, gifted
with an ear for the pounce and ragged inconsequentiality of real
speech and an eye for the shifts and subterfuges by which ordinary
people get by. With The Price of a Child, Lorene Cary has produced
a generous, sardonic, full-blooded work of fiction." —The New York
Times Book Review
"Cary's exacting sensual description does more than lend
credibility to her portrait of the age. It imparts to her writing
an undercurrent of searching perception, and a fastidious element
of psychological complexity." —The Boston Globe
"A profoundly moving, evocative work that puts a fully realized
human face on the issue of slavery and its consequences. Cary's
passionate, intelligent prose and her assured command of historical
events as they sweep across individual lives recall Mark Twain,
Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. The Price of a Child marks the
emergence of a powerful voice in American fiction." —The
Philadelphia Inquirer
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