William D. Moseley

Cocoa - The family of William D. Moseley of Cocoa, Florida, wishes to announce his death.

Bill graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Kentucky (English, Speech, and Dramatic Arts) and, after several years in the U. S. Army and Army Reserve, attended graduate school at the University of Southern California where he was a member of Alpha Epsilon Rho. He moved to Florida in 1961 to teach English at Cocoa High School and went on to teach English and Creative Writing at Miami-Dade Junior College, Brevard Community College, Barry University, and the University of Central Florida. Besides writing theater reviews for Florida Today and Brevard Magazine, he published numerous short stories, his work appearing in literary magazines such as the Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, and the Kansas Quarterly. His short story, "The Preacher and Margery Scott," was anthologized in Best American Short Stories. He then moved from the short story genre to writing radio plays. WNYU in Manhattan and many other public radio stations produced and broadcast his work.

Always a teacher, he was a three-time participant as a guest author at Eastern Kentucky University writing conferences, and he coached fledgling playwrights as Literary Director of the Playwrights Workshop, a group he and fellow educator/officemate Arlan Ropp founded in 1985 at Brevard Community College (Eastern Florida State College).

Bill wrote stage plays for children and adults which were produced from off-Broadway to Beverly Hills, California. In looking to perfect his craft, he worked with Edward Albee and Romulus Linney at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and he received an Artist's Grant from the Florida Arts Council. His work has been included in One Act Plays for Acting Students, and his play, Winter Funeral, won the Florida Theatre Conference Playwriting Contest and the E. Roger Boyle Playwriting Prize. Feeling that acting helped his playwriting, he enjoyed performing roles in many local theater productions such as A Man for All Seasons, Death of a Salesman, Twelve Angry Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as developing and performing a one-man show on Edgar Allen Poe for the Brevard Museum and Sciences Center.

He has been listed in Who's Who in U. S. Writers, Editors and Poets; A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers; and Critical Survey of Short Fiction.

He was preceded in death by parents John and Mary Moseley and brother James Moseley and is survived by sisters Elizabeth Hyden and Dorothy Sutton; his longtime companion Annette Melnicove; and a nephew and nieces. A private memorial will be held for family members in Kentucky.