william melvin kelley a different drummer

Two years later, “Dancers on the Shore,” a collection of short stories, was published. So strong was the compulsion to write that he left Harvard six months short of a degree and devoted himself to writing full time, an activity that resulted in his first novel, “A Different Drummer,” in 1962.

Under the guidance of John Hawkes and poet Archibald McLeish, Kelley burnished his writing skills, and his short story “The Poker Party” won Harvard’s Dana Reed Prize. As a student at Harvard University in 1956, his aim was to become a lawyer, but his gift as a storyteller was hard to suppress and he switched his major to English.

He grew up in the North Bronx and attended Fieldston School in Riverdale. who was an editor at the Amsterdam News from 1922 to 1934. 1, 1937, Kelley was the son of William Melvin Kelley Sr. He had a leg amputated because of circulatory issues in 2009, but none of these health issues kept him from fulfilling his teaching assignments in creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College twice a week.īorn Nov. 1, at Lenox Hill Hospital.Īccording to a statement from his family, Kelley had been on dialysis for 18 years, after bladder cancer caused his kidneys to fail. Kelley, 79, joined the ancestors Wednesday, Feb. Ever the experimentalist with a satirical bent, particularly on race relations, Kelley was at once inclusive and exclusive to the Black Arts Movement. One of William Melvin Kelley’s novels, “A Different Drummer,” signaled his complex, singular style and literary penchant.

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William melvin kelley a different drummer