Leaving Harvard without a degree, he published his first novel A Different Drummer (1962), which established his reputation as a writer and drew comparisons with William Faulkner, James Joyce and James Baldwin. Switching to English Studies, he benefited from the instruction of the authors Archibald MacLeish and John Hawkes, and won an award for his short story The Poker Party. But although his reading comprehension was excellent, he read twice as slowly as the average student.
Kelley was educated in New York and in 1956 enrolled at Harvard with the intention of becoming a lawyer and aiding the emerging civil rights movement. In the 1920s and early 30s his father had been editor of The Amsterdam News, a weekly black newspaper.
(1937-2017) was born on Staten Island, and grew up in a working class and mainly Italian section of the Bronx. The African-American novelist and story writer William Melvin Kelley Jr.
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