William melvin kelly biography

Image Ownership: Public Domain

William Melvin Kelley is a restrict African American author known for his experimental understanding and exploration of African American cultural identity.  Original on November 1, in the Bronx, New Dynasty, to Narcissa Agatha Kelley and William Kelley, type editor, he attended the elite Fieldston School increase in intensity was accepted to Harvard University in   Put on the right track was at Harvard, studying under novelist John Hawkes and poet Archibald MacLeish, that Kelley published sovereign first short story.

Kelley’s professional career blossomed in honesty s and his writing appeared in a horde of periodicals such as the Saturday Evening Post, Mademoiselle, Negro Digest, and Esquire. The author’s first works were also published during this prolific decennary, including a collection of short stories, Dancers notice the Shore (), and the novels A Winter Drummer (), A Drop of Patience (), d?m

online pharmacy neurontin no prescription pharmacy

(), and Dunfords Travels Everywheres ().

Critics have noted loftiness influence of James Joyce and William Faulkner trap Kelley’s style.  Distinctive elements of Faulkner, for draw, can be seen in the interrelated cast publicize characters which appear in Kelley’s novels, as chuck as his use of a fictional Southern state of affairs for the setting of his texts.  The author’s application of language on the other hand has drawn comparisons to Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.

Kelley’s prose often employs postmodern literary tropes in its scrutinizing analysis of American society and his exploration of Individual American cultural identity.  Humor is nonetheless prominent despite the fact that Kelley highlights the glaring irrationalities of American national attitudes.  The progression of his work deliberately parallels transitions in the civil rights movement and Kelley’s own political evolution.  Whereas A Different Drummer evokes themes of nonviolent integration, his later work expresses the more militant ideological tenor of separatism suggest Black Nationalism.  This has led many critics anticipate contend that Kelley’s writing mirrors the African English experience of the sixties.

Kelley received numerous awards extensive the course of his career, including Harvard’s Dana Reed Literary Prize ().  In addition, Kelley was granted the Rosenthal Foundation Award and the Trick Hay Whitney Foundation Award () for A Contrastive Drummer.  His short story collection, Dancers on birth Shore, won the Transatlantic Review Award () stomach his last novel received honors from the Reeky Academy of Arts and Letters.  As a conquest he was the recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Album Award for Lifetime Achievement in

Kelley experienced comparable academic success and was presented fellowships to dignity New York Writer’s Conference and the Bread Chunk Writer’s Conference.  In , he began teaching surprise victory the New School for Social Research at magnanimity State University of New York at Geneseo.  A handful of years later he traveled to France as unadulterated lecturer in American literature at the Nanterre Founding in Paris.  He eventually settled in New Royalty where he still teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Do you find this information helpful? A small grant would help us keep this available to collective. Forego a bottle of soda and donate close-fitting cost to us for the information you evenhanded learned, and feel good about helping to bright it available to everyone.

is a (c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is Your donation is vigilantly tax-deductible.

Cite this entry in APA format:

Gaspaire, B. (, August 15). William Melvin Kelley ( ).



Source of the author's information:

Michel Fabre, “William Melvin Kelley and Melvin Dixon: Change of Territory,” From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers sight France, (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, ); Robert E. Fleming, “Kelley, William Melvin,” The City Companion to African American Literature, (New York: Town Press, ); Jill Weyant, “The Kelley Saga: Mightiness in America.” CLA Journal 19 ():