Bill is a literary critic, book reviewer, and poet.
He is the author ofThe Apparition in the Glass: Charles Brockden Brown’s American Gothic, which views the early American novelist’s major romances against the backdrop of Federalist America; and Resurrecting Leather-Stocking: Pathfinding in Jacksonian America, which discusses James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-Stocking novels in relation to 19th-century America rather than the 18th-century world the novels depict. His critical articles on Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, Willa Cather and other writers have appeared in such journals as American Literature, American Studies, Early American Literature, Modern Language Studies and Studies in American Fiction. (See curriculum vitae)
His review essays and book reviews have been featured in such newspapers and periodicals as American Book Review, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, TheNew York Times Book Review, The New Leader and The Wall Street Journal and in the journals Poetry, Prairie Schooner and Shenandoah. (See c. v.)
Bill’s poetry collections include Two Men Fighting in a Landscape, The Dicer's Cup, Tableau with Crash Helmet, and Where Truth Lies. A fifth, Why the Gods Don't Get It, is due out late in 2021. His poems have appeared in such journals as Antioch Review, Hanging Loose, New Letters, Poetry, Rattle, Virginia Quarterly Review and Yale Review; have won awards from Kansas Quarterly, Rhino, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation; and have been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. (See c.v.)