William Melvin Kelley was an African-American novelist and short-story writer. He is perhaps best known for his debut novel, A Different Drummer, published in 1962. He was also a university professor and creative writing instructor. In 2008, he received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. Kelley is credited with being the first to commit the term "woke" to print, in the title of a 1962 New York Times op-ed on the use of African-American slang by beatniks: "If You're Woke, You Dig It".
