William is available for:

Readings/ Creative Writing / Teaching

- READINGS from THE WORMS OF EUSTON SQUARE
- PRESENTATIONS for LARGE GROUPS:

1. fiction
2. plays
3. mythology

- CLASSES & WORKSHOPS on WRITING FICTION & DRAMA:
The One-Armed Cannibal

1. Inspiration/Perspiration
2. Developing Stories
3. Just Write It
4. Writing and Rewriting

There & Back Again: The Monomyth

1. Plot
2. Character
3. Voice
4. Theme

I enjoy teaching creative writing, and have taught groups and individuals.

For these presentations, I ask the rates suggested by the Society of Authors, plus expenses. However, I’d be delighted to come and meet book groups, schools and colleges for a more reasonable rate. Get in touch for more details.

I am also working on a one man show, Songs I Sing in Languages I Don’t Speak, one hour of songs and chatter about that special zing you get from music, songs, and from trying (and even failing) to speak other languages.

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Translation

I've translated from Latin, Greek, Italian and Portuguese, and a couple of other languages that I don't strictly know.

I'm going to post translations of songs by Caetano Veloso and Fabrizio de Andre, poems by Horace, pseudo-Sappho, Lorca, Lermontov and Cavafy, and examples of my Latin translations ranging from Mercator's letters to modern American graduation certificates.

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Voices

(Constantin Cavafy)

Voices ideal and beloved
of those who’ve died

or those who are

lost for us like the dead.

Sometimes in dreams

And with their echo for a while

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Out of Tune

(Desafinado by Newton Mendonça & Antonio Carlos)

If you were to say I’m out of tune, my love,
That would be the worst you could accuse me of,
For you’re one of those people with the effortless caché,
While I just have whatever God has sent my way

If you will insist that my unusual
style of singing’s simply anti-musical,
I, even if I’m lying, have to argue with you
That this is Bossa Nova, it’s still samba, but it’s new.

The thing that you quite clearly have no clue about
is that us out-of-tune boys have a heart that beats and bleeds.
Took a snapshot of you with my Kodachrome.
Your unparalleled ingratitude’s revealed.

If you just can’t bring yourself to speak about my love
This would be the greatest thing that you could get a hold of.
With all your musicality, you somehow still don’t see
that even in the chest of the out-of-tune boys
deep down is beating silently,
Even in the chest of out-of-tune boys,
beats a human heart.

echoes of the first magic of

our life come back, like music heard

at night, far off, that fades away.

  they speak with us;

Sometimes in thought

     the brain hears them.