William Luvaas

William Luvaas (born 1945, Oregon) is an American author and educator.

Biography

In 1965, Luvaas was one of two AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers in Alabama, working with black sharecroppers and domestic workers in a government-funded program "designed to provide needed resources to nonprofit organizations and public agencies to increase their capacity to lift communities out of poverty." ^[1]

Luvaas is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. He developed the first high school-level fiction writing course in New York. As fiction coordinator for New York State Poets in Public Service and New York State Poets in Schools, he was writer-in-residence for schools, hospitals and juvenile detention facilities. ^{[2] [3] [4] [5]}

In 2006, he received the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for prose, awarded while he was teaching at San Diego State University. ^[6]

His short story collection Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle (Spuyten Duyvil) was awarded 2013 Book of the Year by HuffPost and was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

Publications

Novels

• Ashes Rain Down

• The Seductions of Natalie Bach (Little, Brown)

• Going Under (Putnam), Beneath The Coyote Hills (Spuyten Duyvil), ^[7]

• Welcome To Saint Angel (Anaphora Literary Press), plus a short story collection: A Working Man’s Apocrypha (Oklahoma Univ. Press), called "brilliant" by the Los Angeles Times reviewer, Susan Salter Reynolds. ^{[8] [9] [10]}

Other

• The Corona Chronicles from Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, Stories Inspired By COVID-19 , and an anthology of California writers, Into The Deep End: The Writing Center Anthology 3. (editor)

Personal life

Lucas has suffered from epilepsy since he was 12 years old. ^[11]

References

1. "Career Day Stresses Variety". The Berkeley Gazette. 10 May 1967.
2. Kathe, Katheleen. "Writer teaches students to create fiction". newspapers.com. Newspapers. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
3. "Guest speakers". The Journal News. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
4. "Poetry's healing effect on children". 20 Feb 1990 The Journal News. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
5. "Luzerne students write stories". 13 Feb 1980 The Post-Star. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
6. "William Luvaas". National Endowment for the Arts .
7. Wilkens, John (2 October 2016). "Reading: William Luvaas". San Diego Union Tribune.
8. Reynolds, Susan Salter. "Discoveries". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 20 January 2024.
9. Goodrich, Chris (26 March 1995). "Fiction Book Review" . Los Angeles Times .
10. Marotta, Linda (5 March 1995). "In Short: Fiction". The New York Times .
11. "Check Out William Luvaas's Story". Voyage LA. April 28, 2025.