William Heath

Poet, Fiction Writer

Annapolis, MD
Maryland US

Author's Bio

I believe that fiction should delight and instruct and engage the reader in the real world, not offer escapist fantasy. Authors should be judged on the quality of their descption, dialogue, drama, and ability to create characters unlike themselves, charcters of different ages, gender, race, region and so forth. It is the clash of values and points of view that creates meaning in fiction. In The Children Bob Moses Led I wrote about the civil rights movement in Mississippi; in Blacksnake's Path the clashing worlds of the Miami and settlers in the Old Northwest; in Devil Dancer, I bring the lush horsefarms as well as the lowest dives of Lexington, Kentucky, to life. In my next novel I will write another very different world, but always I strive to dramatize what being human means. Blacksnake's Path, by the way, is now available as an ebook and The Children Bob Moses Led was reissued in 2014 in a twentieth-anniversary edition by NewSouth Books. In 2015 I published a work of history, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest, and in 2017 the University of Mississippi Press published Conversations with Robert Stone, a collection of interviews.  My chapbook of autobiographical poems, Night Moves in Ohio (Finishing Line Press) was published in 2019.  A book of poems about growing up in Poland, Ohio, and suburb of Youngstown, as well as a variety of other poems on various topics, Steel Valley Elegy (Kelsay Books) was published in 2020.  

Publications & Prizes

Fiction

Books:
Devil Dancer (Somondoco Press, 2013)
,
Blacksnake's Path: The True Adventures of William Wells (Heritage Books, 2008)
,
The Children Bob Moses Led (Milkweed Editions, 1995)

Poetry

Books:
Steel Valley Elegy (Kelsay Books, 2022)
,
The Walking Man (Icarus Press, 1994)
Chapbook:
Night Moves in Ohio (Finishing Line Press, 2020)
Prizes won: 

The Children Bob Moses Led won the Hackney Literary Award. In 3003 Time magazine online selected it as one of the eleven best novels ever written on the African American experience. The William Heath Award is given annually to the best creative writer at Mt. St. Mary's University William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest won two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America for best Historical Nonfiction book and best first Nonfiction book; it was a finalist for the Ohioana Award and the Jon Gjerde Prize in Midwestern History.

Personal Favorites

Favorite authors: 
Shakespeare, Flaubert, Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, Faulkner, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Christina Stead, and Henry Roth's Call It Sleep. Among more contemporary authors, I especially admire Vladimir Nabokov, Malcolm Lowry, Thomas Berger, and Robert Stone. Some of my favorite poets nowadays: Philip Levine, Jack Gilbert, Stephen Dunn, Billy Collins, Pablo Neruda, Eamon Grennan, William Hathaway, David Salner, Hope Esperanza Snyder, and Wislawa Szymborska.
What I'm reading now: 
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, New and Selected Poems by Stephen Dunn, Collected Poems by Jack Gilbert, Dawn Choices: New and Selected Poems by William Hathaway, Two-Buck Chuck and the Marlboro Man by Frank Bergon, Out of Sight by Eamon Grennan, The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell, The Wheel of Fire by G. Wilson Knight

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Identifies as: 
American
Prefers to work with: 
Any
Fluent in: 
Spanish
Born in: 
Youngstown, OH
Ohio
Raised in: 
Poland, OH
Ohio
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.
Last update: Oct 20, 2022