Photo of William Penn. Older man with grey hair, wearing a outdoors jacket.

William Penn

Professor
Creative Writing

Office: C706 Wells Hall
Phone: 517-355-7570
Email: penn@msu.edu

W.S. Penn teaches in the Creative Writing Program and is one of the founding members of the Native American Writer’ ‘ s Circle (initially the Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers). 

He is the author of seven books, including The Absence of Angels (novel), Killing Time with Strangers (novel), This is the World (stories), All My Sins Are Relatives (essays), and Feathering Custer (essays). He has won the Stephen Crane Prize for Fiction (twice), an American Book Award (fiction), A North American Indian Prose Award (essays), and a Distinguished Faculty Award. Presently, he is shopping a new novel, Hazing: A Novel in Ten Satires completing a new novel, The Revenge of King George working on a collection of essays and revising two film scripts. 

Penn is also a contributor to the Houghton Mifflin Anthology of Literature (fiction and essay), a new anthology by writers teaching non-fiction, and a continuing advisor to the Native Writers Circle and American Indian Studies Program at MSU.

COURSES TAUGHT:

ENG223: Introduction to Creative Non-Fiction Writing
ENG228: Introduction to Fiction Writing
ENG391: Special Topics in English
ENG423: Advanced Non-Fiction Writing
ENG428: Advanced Fiction Writing