William Melvin Kelley

Born in New York in 1937, William Melvin Kelley was an African-American writer known for his satirical explorations of race relations in America. He was just twenty-four years old when his debut novel, A Different Drummer , was first published in 1962, earning him critical comparisons to William Faulkner and James Baldwin. A Drop Of Patience , first published in 1965, is his second novel. Considered part of the Black Arts Movement, Kelley was in 2014 officially credited by the Oxford English...See more

Born in New York in 1937, William Melvin Kelley was an African-American writer known for his satirical explorations of race relations in America. He was just twenty-four years old when his debut novel, A Different Drummer , was first published in 1962, earning him critical comparisons to William Faulkner and James Baldwin. A Drop Of Patience , first published in 1965, is his second novel. Considered part of the Black Arts Movement, Kelley was in 2014 officially credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with coining the political term 'woke,' in a 1962 New York Times article entitled 'If You're Woke You Dig It'. He died in February of 2017, aged 79. See less