William H. Gass is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and former professor of philosophy. His works of fiction include Omensetter’s Luck, Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and The Tunnel, a project on which he spent thirty years.
Gass has also written numerous works of nonfiction, among them On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry, Habitations of the Word, Finding a Form, and Tests of Time, the last two of which earned him National Book Critics Circle Awards for Criticism. Among his many honors, he has recieved an American Book Award, grants from both the Guggenheim and Rockfeller foundations, and, in 1999, the PEN/Nabokov Award for Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation.