William Heath

William Heath has a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University. He has taught American literature and creative writing at Kenyon, Transylvania, Vassar, the University of Seville, and Mt. St. Mary's University, where The William Heath Award is given annually to the best student writer. He is the author of three novels: The Children Bob Moses Led (winner of the Hackney Literary Award; selected by Time online as one of the eleven best novels ever written on the African-American experience), Blacksnake’s Path, Devil Dancer; five books of poetry, The Walking Man, Steel Valley Elegy, and Going Places, Alms for Oblivion and Prime Time ; three chapbooks, Night Moves in Ohio, Leaving Seville and Inventing the Americas; a work of history, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest (winner of two Spur Awards and the Oliver Hazard Perry Award); and a collection of interviews, Conversations with Robert Stone. He has published some five hundred poems, numerous books reviews, and scholarly essays on Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, Thomas Berger, and Frank Bergon. In 2023 he received the Hiram College Lifetime Achievement Award.