Manny Fried isn’t going down without a fight. The 96-year-old playwright, labor activist and iconoclast gave the theater community a scare two weeks ago when he was hospitalized with congestive heart failure.

But Fried, in typical matter-of-fact fashion, was quick to dispel any rumors of his demise.

“I’m licking this thing, and I’m determined to lick it,” Fried declared from his hospital bed at Kenmore Mercy Hospital, with his daughter Mindy at his side. Even as he lay on his bed, surely glaring with contempt at the IV needle stuck in his arm, Fried’s mind was focused on future projects. His current predicament –what’s a little heart failure when you have things to accomplish? –was the least of his worries.

The longtime playwright, known for penning powerful chronicles of the labor movement in such works as “The Dodo Bird” and “Drop Hammer,” as well as for boldly confronting the scourge of McCarthyism and the FBI in the 1950s and ’60s, is currently serving as an adviser for Musical- Fare Theatre’s upcoming production of “Crossroad Blues.”

“We’ve been working on it now for a few months, so now we have a script and we’re going to put it on its feet and look at and see what adjustments to make,” Fried said of the MusicalFare show, which opens Jan. 6. He also is working on his memoirs, which he plans to publish electronically. (How? “I have a man in Kansas City,” he said). Fried also recently released a DVD of his autobiographical one-man show, “Boilermakers and Martinis,” which he performed to great acclaim at Road Less Traveled Theatre in 2007.

As for licking his illness, Fried’s determination has paid off.

Just a few days after entering the hospital, he returned home to his Kenmore apartment in an assisted living facility. He reports that he is “fully recovered” and mobile enough to pursue his writing projects and continue the regular Sunday brunch he hosts for friends at Cole’s on Elmwood Avenue. I caught him by phone on Tuesday just as he was heading out the door to meet with his clinical psychologist. “Gotta keep my mind straight,” he said, chuckling. His humor, like his energy and intelligence, hasn’t faded.

By his example, Fried inspires just about everyone he crosses paths with. MusicalFare Executive and Artistic Director Randall Kramer, who is working on “Crossroad Blues” with Fried and Jim Runfola, is awed by the playwright’s tenacity and dedication to his craft. He said Fried’s help was instrumental in the production earlier this year of “American Rhapsody,” a show Kramer had to put together in short order to fill in for a cancellation on the theater’s winter schedule.

“With ‘American Rhapsody’ things had to be done quickly, and he had a big hand in turning that into a much more theatrical piece than I would have even thought of,” Kramer said. “He said to me at the time, ‘Listen, I just want to do this because I want people to know I’m looking for work.’ He just wants to work, and this is why every breath he takes is toward that.”

Fried couldn’t help pointing out, as he always does when someone brings up either his age or his productivity, that both his parents lived well into their late 90s –“A damn good inheritance,” Fried calls it. His response to the concern of the community? Thanks for asking, but I’m not about to shuffle off at the mere age of 96.

His response to adversity now, as it was when he faced the House Un-American Activities Committee and the hardships that followed his refusal to name names in the 1950s, is simple, unadorned determination.

“I’ll come back,” Fried said. “I’m determined to come back.”