We are sad to announce that William Smith Wilson III, 83, a retired Professor of English at Queens College, died on Monday February 1, 2016, from cardiac arrest. (We have only just received this news.)

Born in Baltimore in 1932, Bill was raised in Maryland, attended the University of Virginia for his B.A., Yale University for his Ph.D., and taught in the English Department at Queens from 1962 until his retirement in the early 1990s. Trained as a medievalist, and the author of several important articles on Chaucer’s “House of Fame,” Bill focused on fiction and essay writing for most of his career. While raising three children in Chelsea, he published a collection of short stories, “Why I Don’t Write Like Franz Kafka” (1975), and the novel “Birthplace” (1982). The son of sculptor and painter May Wilson, he was deeply involved in the post-war New York art world, the subject of his numerous published essays. Survivors include his sister, Betty Jane Butler, children Katherine, Ara, and Andrew, and grandchildren Jack, Alex, Augusta and Josephine. Contributions may be offered in his honor to PBS public television (www.thirteen.org) the High Line (https://www.thehighline.org/donate) or the Baltimore Museum (https://artbma.org/give- join/give.html#tribute).