Rambling man

William H. Lewis (MFA, Creative Writing ’94) spent many hours navigating the back roads of Virginia. While driving, he’d periodically pull off the road to rummage around a yard sale or take a short hike in the mountains.
 
Memories like these have stayed with him over the years.

“I spent a lot of time driving through the countryside,” says Lewis, who traveled around the state for soccer tournaments with the club team at Virginia and worked as a wine delivery truck driver in the Commonwealth while he was a graduate student.

Lewis also taught for two years at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg shortly after finishing at U.Va. and would travel the nearby rural roads there, too.

The title of his second collection of short stories, “I Got Somebody in Staunton,” is a testament to many of these country drives. The book, recently honored as a 2006 finalist for the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction, has been lauded by critics for its compelling rendering of black-American life as well as quality of writing, range of subjects and place, complexity of situation and nuance of character development.

Lewis, who is called “Hank” in most circles, is remarkably levelheaded and modest for a man who has achieved such literary acclaim at the age of 38.

When he got the call announcing that he had been named one of four finalists for the award from a pool of 359, Lewis said, he was caught off guard. He knew his editor had submitted the book for various awards, but he certainly wasn’t spending his free time pining for prizes.

“It just wasn’t even in my universe,” Lewis says. The award is the largest peer-juried prize for fiction in the United States.

“I hardly think of them as peers,” he says. This year’s judges included George Garrett, the former poet laureate of state of Virginia and creative writing professor at the University from 1962 to 1967 and 1984 to 2000.

Being honored for his writing is not entirely new for Lewis, who has won numerous awards, including the Balch Prize for Best Short Story for two consecutive years at Virginia and an honorable mention for the Prize for Short Fiction from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.

The meandering path Lewis traveled to arrive to his current post, as associate professor of English at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., has been long and varied.

Along the way, he didn’t just work as a wine delivery truck driver in Virginia.

He was a clerk at the Plan 9 record store in Charlottesville, a dishwasher at Fellini’s, a security guard at the U.Va. art museum, jazz disc jockey, community organizer, construction laborer and a coach for the Bahamas National Soccer Team.

These days, he keeps his foot in the action by coaching an under-14 girls’ soccer team in the American Youth Soccer Association. The team will represent the Central New York State region at the association’s national tournament in July. “It’s been a big change,” he says of his first stint coaching at this level. “I’m helping them build confidence as young women.”

Lewis and his wife of two years, Sarah, met in the Caribbean while Lewis was teaching at the College of the Bahamas in the early 2000s.

They returned to the states a few years ago when Lewis took a job at Centre College in Danville, Ky. From there, they migrated north to Hamilton, not unlike the move Lewis made from his home in Chattanooga, Tenn., to Hartford, Conn., to begin at Trinity College.

This summer Lewis intends to start “in earnest” on the novel he’s been tossing around upstairs for quite a few years now. “I originally thought it was two or three short stories,” he says. “But they are closing themselves together in my head.”

There was a 10-year hiatus between the publication of his first and second books of short stories. “I’m not a genius writer,” says Lewis. “I’m kind of a plodder. More than anything I like the tinkering of it.”

“Some writers make writing a little too precious,” he adds. “It’s important to write, it’s a gift, a blessing, but it’s not the only thing in the world.”

For now, Lewis is able to focus on both his writing and teaching — a job he’s been doing steadily and at all academic levels since he graduated from college in 1989. “I’m very happy to be in the situation that I’m in right now,” he says.