Nancy Jane Price ’46, 1925–2023

Poet and novelist Nancy Jane Price ’46, author of the 1987 suspense novel “Sleeping With the Enemy,” died Nov. 20, 2023, at age 98. 

When she was a teenager her family settled in Cedar Falls, Iowa, where her father, Malcolm Price, became president of Iowa State Teachers College, later known as the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). Following Cornell she married and began teaching at UNI. She studied with poets John Holmes and Philip Booth, attended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and received a master’s degree from UNI.

The Poetry Society of America gave her their annual award in 1967. In 1968 she took a leave from teaching to pursue fiction, writing in a small upstairs room before her three children woke each morning. 

Price published more than a dozen novels, with translations in 18 languages. She also published more than 100 poems and stories and received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and residencies in Italy, France, and Ireland. Her third novel, “Sleeping with the Enemy,” was made into a 1991 movie starring Julia Roberts.

John, her eldest son, died in 2005. She remained in Cedar Falls, close to her two remaining children, and continued writing. She finished her final novel, set in Cedar Falls, in the last year of her life. 

Price is survived by her two children, Catherine Thompson ’74 and David.