William Demby

William Demby (December 25, 1922 – May 23, 2013) was an African-American writer, whose works include Beetlecreek (1950), The Catacombs (1965), Love Story Black (1978) and King Comus (2007, published posthumously in November 2017).[1]

William Demby
William Demby (1956)
Photo by Carl Van Vechten
BornWilliam Demby
(1922-12-25)December 25, 1922
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US
DiedMay 23, 2013(2013-05-23) (aged 90)
Sag Harbor, Long Island, NY, US
OccupationNovelist
NationalityAmerican
Period1950–2013
Notable worksBeetlecreek; The Catacombs; Love Story Black; King Comus
Notable awardsAnisfield-Wolf 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award
SpouseLucia Drudi (1953–95 her death) Barbara Morris (2004–his death)

Life

William Demby was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 25, 1922. His family later moved to Clarksburg, West Virginia. He studied briefly at West Virginia State University but was drafted into an African-American cavalry unit that was deployed to North Africa and Italy during World War Two. During his military service he contributed to the Army publication Stars and Stripes.

After the war he graduated from Fisk University in Nashville in 1947. That same year, he moved to Rome, Italy, where he met writer Lucia Drudi, whom he married in 1953. The couple had a son, James Gabriele Demby, in 1955, who composes and teaches music in Italy. Lucia Drudi died in 1995.

During his decades living in Rome, Demby worked for many important Italian film directors, among them Federico Fellini, translating Italian screenplays and films into English. He was assistant director of dialogue on Roberto Rossellini's film Europa 51, starring Ingrid Bergman. Demby also wrote for various American magazines, among them The Reporter.

In Italy, he wrote his first, existentialist, novel, Beetlecreek (1950), and then his second, more experimental novel, The Catacombs (1965).

Later in life, he reconnected with Barbara Morris, whom he knew from his time at Fisk University. Morris was a former lawyer with NAACP, and the two married in 2004.

Demby began teaching English in 1969 at the College of Staten Island (CUNY), where he worked until the late 1980s. Demby published his third novel, Love Story Black, in 1978 on Reed, Cannon and Johnson. He returned to Italy often, spending time in Rome, and in a villa in Tuscany, where he lived for nearly a decade from the late 1980s until the late '90s. Demby spent his final years in Sag Harbor, NY.

In 2006, Demby was honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement.

His last novel, King Comus, was finished in 2007 and remained in manuscript form at the time of Demby's death. Published posthumously in November 2017 by Ishmael Reed Publishing Company, it was designated "REDISCOVERED NOVEL OF THE YEAR" by Jeff Biggers in the Huffington Post.[2]

William Demby died in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, on May 23, 2013.

Works
  • Beetlecreek, 1950
  • The Catacombs, 1965
  • Love Story Black, 1978
  • Blueboy, 1980
  • King Comus, 2007 (published posthumously in November 2017)
gollark: If the code is also on the notsquare grid, graphs.
gollark: Just have a "square" grid but each tile connects to FIVE things, and force people to provide code as a graph or something.
gollark: Oh, you're right, the internal geometry doesn't have to match anything you can actually represent.
gollark: Your average 2D one, but on an infinite tiling of heptagons.
gollark: Hyperbolic geometry esolang which is actually 2D and not 3D?

See also

References
  1. "William Demby, Author of Experimental Novels, Dies at 90". The New York Times. May 31, 2013.
  2. "King Comus: Rediscovered Novel Of The Year". HuffPost. December 14, 2017.
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