William Swain Penn III

William S. Penn (Bill), award winning author, beloved teacher, and devoted husband and father, died the morning of August 28th, 2025, at the University of Michigan Hospital. Bill’s life was dedicated to caring for his family, his students, and the world through quiet and reliable thought, and the telling of their stories. Born in 1949, Bill was raised in a family that struggled with their often conflicting white and native American heritage.

Through the affection of his grandfather and the encouragement of his sisters, he developed a love of storytelling that he would pursue as a means of both reconciling his heritage and cultivating the beauty of stories for future generations. As he wrote in the dedication to his book “All My Sins are Relatives,” winner of the North American Indian Prose Award in 1994, “For Grandfather, who knows / And to Rachel and Willy, so they may.” This desire to participate in the project of passing and modeling wisdom between generations led Bill to study English and fiction writing, first at the University of California Davis, then at the doctoral level at Syracuse University, receiving his Doctor of Arts in 1979. The long teaching career that followed began with Bill working as an assistant professor at the State University of New York and ending as a distinguished professor at Michigan State University in 2019, having taught hundreds of students a love of literature, storytelling, and the telling of the world. In that time, Bill authored eleven books, including Killing Time with Strangers which won the American Book Award in 2001, Feathering Custer which won the Worldcraft Circle Writer of the Year award in 2002, and Raising Bean: Essays on Laughing and Living. Through his work lives his loving philosophy of humor, satire, and deep care for the world he told of. To the end, he was working on his stories, beginning his composition of a companion book to Raising Bean, which he intended to title “Travels with Charlie Bun.” He lives on in the love that cannot be forgotten, the habits, ways of thinking, and practices of living that continue in all who were fortunate enough to know him.

His memorial wish would match his quiet dedication, for those who know to follow his lead, and create beauty for those who may, in whatever manner they can. He is survived by Jennifer, Rachel (Michael), Willy, Clara, Charlie, and his sister, Pat Hilden.