{"product_id":"alms-for-oblivion","title":"Alms for Oblivion","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWilliam Heath\u003c\/strong\u003e was born in Youngstown, Ohio, on 27 June 1942. A graduate of Hiram College, with a Ph.D. in American Studies from Case Western Reserve, he has taught American literature and creative writing at Kenyon, Transylvania, Vassar, and the University of Seville as the Fulbright professor of American literature. Since 1981 he taught at Mount Saint Mary’s University, where he edited \u003cem\u003eThe Monocacy Valley Review, \u003c\/em\u003ewhich won national awards for excellence, and retired in 2007as a Professor Emeritus. The William Heath Award is given annually to honor a student writer. In 2008–9 he was the Sophia M. Libman Professor of Humanities at Hood College. In 2022 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Hiram.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHeath’s novel about the civil rights movement in Mississippi, \u003cem\u003eThe Children Bob Moses Led \u003c\/em\u003e(Milkweed Editions, 1995, paperback 1997), won the Hackney Literary Award for best novel, was nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and by Joyce Carol Oates for the Ainsfield-Wolf Award. \u003cem\u003eTime \u003c\/em\u003emagazine selected it as one of eleven outstanding novels on the African-American experience. A twentieth anniversary edition was published by NewSouth Books in 2014.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHis second novel, \u003cem\u003eBlacksnake’s Path: The True Adventures of William Wells \u003c\/em\u003e(Heritage Books, 2008), was nominated for the James Fenimore Cooper Award and chosen by the History Book Club as an alternate selection. \u003cem\u003eDevil Dancer\u003c\/em\u003e (Somondoco Press, 2013) is a neo-noir crime novel set in Lexington, KY. \u003cem\u003eWilliam Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest\u003c\/em\u003e (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015, paperback 2017) won two Spur Awards for best history book and best first nonfiction book and the Oliver Hazard Perry Award for military history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe also edited \u003cem\u003eConversations with Robert Stone\u003c\/em\u003e (University of Mississippi Press 2016, paperback 2018). His forty book reviews and twenty essays on Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, William Styron, Thomas Berger, Robert Stone, and Frank Bergon, among others, as well as historical studies of Thomas Morton and William Wells have appeared in various newspapers, scholarly journals, literary magazines, reviews, and anthologies. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHeath began publishing his poetry in the late sixties; the best are collected in \u003cem\u003eThe Walking Man\u003c\/em\u003e (Icarus Books, 1994). James Wright said of this early work: “William Heath is in my opinion one of the most brilliantly accomplished and gifted young poets to appear in the United States in quite some time. I am especially moved by the delicacy and precision of the language, which indicates a distinguished intelligence, and by the purity and depth of feeling in all of his poems.” Richard Wilbur noted: “\u003cem\u003eThe Walking Man\u003c\/em\u003e is the work of a poet who knows how to tell a story.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSteel Valley Elegy\u003c\/em\u003e (Kelsay Books, 2022), selects later work set in the U.S., including poems from a chapbook, \u003cem\u003eNight Moves in Ohio\u003c\/em\u003e (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Kit Hathaway noted that these poems “are by turns poignant, funny, and starkly realistic, teeming with fascinating storyline detail and imagery.” Eamon Grennan added, “These poems are savvy and lively, as exact as a high jumper’s focus, quick and accurate as a tennis player’s eye, wrist, ankle . . . Heath’s own remembrance of things past—an autobiography in rapt miniature lit by the laser-light of memory.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eGoing Places\u003c\/em\u003e (Kelsay Books, 2023), set abroad, is the companion volume to \u003cem\u003eSteel Valley Elegy. \u003c\/em\u003eAll the poems display an eye for telling detail, a lucid perspective, an ironic, witty, thoughtful sensibility, sonorous words, memorable narrative, a deft way of moving a poem down the page. As Esperanza Hope Snyder stated, “William Heath is a master of describing his journeys to exotic and challenging places in the world, where people, history, art, and natural beauty inspire his poetry. Few poets understand the fragility of the world as deeply as Heath does.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAlms for Oblivion\u003c\/em\u003e (Kelsay Books, 2024) contains poems set at home and abroad, including autobiography, social commentary, travels, the natural world, the art of poetry, aging, and death.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eInventing the Americas\u003c\/em\u003e (Finishing Line Press, 2024) is a chapbook of poems on Columbus and Vespucci in the Western Hemisphere.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe and his wife, Roser Caminals-Heath—author of ten novels in Catalan—lived in Frederick, MD since 1981 and moved to Annapolis in 2022.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003eVisit:\u003cbr\u003ewww.williamheathbooks.com\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePaperback: 176 pages\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Kelsay Books (July 27, 2024)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c!----\u003e","brand":"Kelsay Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43220579713086,"sku":"kwn1787287019462","price":17.02,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0620\/0075\/8846\/files\/alms-for-oblivion_1.jpg?v=1787287025","url":"https:\/\/urbanglamboutique.shop\/products\/alms-for-oblivion","provider":"My Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}