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William Helmuth Heyen is an American poet, editor, and literary critic. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Suffolk County. He received a BA from the State University of New York at Brockport and earned a doctorate in English from Ohio University in 1967.
He taught American literature and creative writing at SUNY–Brockport for over 30 years before retiring in 2000. He also briefly served as Director of the Brockport Writers Forum, a series of readings by and video interviews with numerous American and international authors.
His work has been published in numerous literary journals and periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Ontario Review, Harper's, TriQuarterly, The Georgia Review, Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review and online publications such as Exit-Online. His work has also been published in 200 anthologies, in dozens of limited-edition chapbooks and broadsides, and on audio.
He spent the 1971–1972 academic year as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in American literature at the University of Hanover in what was then West Germany. During this time, he visited a number of sites involved in the Holocaust. These experiences, combined with his own family history, resulted in three volumes of poetry on the subject published over the next 32 years. He has been awarded NEA, Guggenheim, American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters, and other prizes.
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