William Howard Gass was an American novelist, short-story writer, critic, and professor of philosophy. Three of his seven essays won National Book Critics Circle Awards and one, A Temple of Texts, won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. Gass taught at the College of Wooster, Purdue University, and Washington University of St. Louis. Gass died in his home in Missouri in 2017 at the age of 93.