Nathan C. Heard

Nathan C. Heard

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"[Heard] was a leading force in fiction because he showed how writers could take a real experience and transform it into a useful vision...” —Amiri Baraka

Nathan C. Heard is considered one of the forefathers of "street literature". Heard's first novel Howard Street, published in 1968, depicts the underbelly of inner-city life of Black America. Howard Street sold more than 1 million copies. Heard also wrote five other novels in the Genre.

Nathan C. Heard started writing while serving a seven year sentence for armed robbery at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. After his release, Heard taught creative writing at Rutgers and appeared in several "Blaxpoitation" films. During the 1970's Heard wrote a column for the New York Times. Nathan Heard passed away in 2004 at the age of 67.

Howard Street
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ISBN: 1878923064
Format: Paperback, 246pp
Pub. Date: April 1993
Publisher: Amok Books

Originally published in 1968, this is the searingly powerful first novel written inside Trenton State Penitentiary and based on the authentic first-hand Newark street experiences of one of the most accomplished living African-American writers. Howard Street is a uniquely powerful combination of the hard-earned insight into the ghetto world of pimps, 'hos, junkies, dope dealers, winos, corrupt cops, and young hoodlums of such "black experience" legends as Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim, with the disciplined and inspired pulp prose of Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford or Chester Himes.

A Cold Fire Burning
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ISBN: 1878923048
Format: Paperback, 360pp
Pub. Date: August 1996
Publisher: Amok Books

A Cold Fire Burning brilliantly depicts an interracial love story amidst the political changes of the early Seventies. Shadow is a working-class black man in the ghetto of Newark, NJ. An affair with Terri, a liberal white woman who works at a storefront drug rehab center, begins to throw his sense of the world into turmoil. When the racial and psychosexual tensions inherent in their relationship finally reach the boiling point, Shadow rejects Terri and everything she represents to him and winds up the leader of a rag-tag band of would-be black nationalist urban guerillas. Tragedy ensues when Shadow tries to transform their revolutionary rhetoric into reality on the harsh streets of Newark.

House of Slammers
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ISBN: 002549760X
Format: Hardcover, 256pp
Pub. Date: October 1983
Publisher: Macmillan Publishing Company, Incorporated

To Reach a Dream
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ISBN: 0451054903
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 160pp
Pub. Date: July 1973
Publisher: N A L

Gordon's War

Released 1973

Starring:

Paul Winfield .... Gordon Hudson
Carl Lee .... Bee Bishop
David Downing .... Otis Russell
Tony King .... Roy Green
Gilbert Lewis .... Spanish Harry
Carl Gordon .... Luther the Pimp
Nathan C. Heard .... Big Pink
Grace Jones .... Mary
Jackie Page .... Bedroom Girl
Charles Bergansky .... Caucasian killer
Adam Wade .... Hustler
Hansford Rowe .... Dog Salesman
Warren Taurien .... Goose
Ralph Wilcox .... Black hit man
David Connell .... Hotel Proprieter