William Melvin Kelley (New York, 1937-2017) studied at Fieldston School and later at Harvard University. The author of four novels and a collection of short stories, he was a writer-in-residence at the State University of New York and taught at The New School and at Sarah Lawrence College. He was awarded the Dana Reed and Anisfield-Wolf Awards. In 2014, the Oxford English Dictionary officially credited Kelley with coining the political term woke in 1962 in a New York Times article titled "If You're Woke You Dig It."