Henry Alley is a writer of fiction and literary criticism. His background includes over sixty stories published over the past fifty years, in such journals as Colere, Seattle Review, Cimarron Review, Oxford Magazine, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, Webster Review, Gertrude, Outerbridge, Clackamas Literary Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. In addition, he has five novels: Through Glass (Iris Press, 1979), The Lattice (Ariadne Press, 1986), Umbrella of Glass (Breitenbush Books, 1988), Precincts of Light (Inkwater Press, 2010), and Men Touching (Chelsea Station Editions, 2019). Of Men Touching, Lambda Review has written, “So many things make up a successfully written novel—two of the most important being plot and character. Henry Alley masters both in his latest novel, Men Touching, but it’s his characters, both three-dimensional and subtly nuanced, that drive the narrative with their convincing faults and merits… This is the real genius in Alley’s work—his beautifully drawn characters. You feel you know them; their motives, their attributes, their flaws all touch you deeply.”

Henry is also the author of a collection of stories, The Dahlia Field (Chelsea Station Editions, 2017). Kirkus Review gave it a star and, as one of the Best Indie Books of 2017, called it “funny, poignant, and engrossing… A fine collection that explores and celebrates the ebb and flow of gay life.”

One of his stories was also chosen for Best Gay Stories 2017, and that same year he was awarded a Mill House Residency by Writing by Writers. In 2015, he won the Gertrude Press Short Story Contest. Gertrude Press also selected his story, “Leonardo and I,” as winner of its 2006 fiction chapbook award. Of his fiction in general, Christopher Bram has written, “Henry Alley is an excellent writer. His fiction is artfully artless, clear, concise, and real. Best of all, he regularly tells stories that nobody else is telling.”

Henry received his B.A. from Stanford University, and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Ph.D. in Prose Fiction from Cornell University. He grew up in Seattle, Washington, and has lived in various places in the U.S. As a professor of English and Literature, he has taught from 1972 to 2016 at the School of the Ozarks, the University of Idaho and, for 44 years, in the Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon. He has written numerous scholarly articles, many of them focused on George Eliot and the classics. In 1997, University of Delaware Press published his scholarly study, The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George Eliot. He has been president twice of his local Lane Literary Guild and for 2020-21 moderated a reading series of poetry, creative nonfiction and fiction. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, with his husband, Austin Gray.