William Demby was an African-American writer, whose works include Beetlecreek, The Catacombs, Love Story Black and King Comus.
11 Facts About William Demby
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William Demby was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 25,1922, to William and Gertrude Demby.
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William Demby was raised alongside six siblings by his mother, who was a schoolteacher, and his father, who worked for a natural gas company.
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William Demby studied English briefly at West Virginia State University with Margaret Walker but was drafted into an African-American cavalry unit that was deployed to North Africa and Italy during World War II.
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William Demby was assistant director of dialogue on Roberto Rossellini's film Europa 51, starring Ingrid Bergman.
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William Demby acted in the film Anna's Sin, a retelling of Shakespeare's Othello set in 1950s Rome whose interracial romance ends happily.
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William Demby began teaching English in 1969 at the College of Staten Island, where he worked until the late 1980s.
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William Demby 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 1990s.
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William Demby spent his final years in Sag Harbor, New York.
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In 2006, William Demby was honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement.
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William Demby died in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, on May 23,2013, aged 90.