Meet William H. Coles, Surgeon Turned Novelist, Poet, Storywriter & Podcaster

William H. Coles, MD, MS, FACS, a former ophthalmic surgeon, is the award-winning author of short stories, essays on writing, interviews, poetry and novels in contests including The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition. He is the creator of StoryInLiteraryFiction.com, a website dedicated to educational material, a workshop, and examples for writers seeking to create lasting character-based fiction with strong dramatic plots that stimulate thought about the human condition. The site has attracted 3M+ page views.

In 2010, Coles published Facing Grace with Gloria and Other Stories, his first collection of award-winning stories. His 2011 debut novel, The Surgeon’s Wife, was a finalist in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. Coles wrote scripts for editorials and weekly radio segments on jazz for the NPR affiliate WBFO that he presented on-air. He  collaborated with nine acclaimed artists to illustrate stories and novels and created an online art gallery of the works. In filmmaking, he won the Conrad Berens Award Competition for best film on a medical subject. In 2018, he produced the “Story in Fiction” podcast, reading his stories and novels, and improvising and playing the piano for intros and outros.