After leaving the paper, Alvarez worked on ships as a laborer before joining the staff of the HBO drama The Wire.

In 2010, he was nominated for an Edgar Award for The Wire: Truth Be Told, an encyclopedic companion to the television series.

The first of three sons of Manuel Rafael Alvarez and the former Gloria Jones, the author was born at St. Agnes Hospital in southwest Baltimore across from a former Catholic orphanage and reform school—St.

[7][8] The project also includes stories by Alvarez's daughter Sofia, Baltimore musician Jason Tinney, Rosalia Scalia and Airin Miller.

[8] In 2001, Alvarez left the Baltimore Sun and joined the Seafarers International Union with the intention of working on ships.

Alvarez first worked in television as a freelance screenwriter[4] on Homicide: Life on the Street contributing the teleplay for the sixth season episode "All is Bright".

[9] The show was based on a book by his former Sun colleague David Simon who was working as a producer on the sixth season in 1997 when Alvarez was hired.

[17] Simon credits Alvarez with bringing a wealth of experience to their depiction of the Baltimore port in the show's second season.

[18] Alvarez described The Wire as similar to a Russian novel in that "the reader does the work for the first hundred pages, and then it turns and you're lost in it[.]

[20] Alvarez co-wrote the episode "A Civil War" with series creator and show runner Rand Ravich.