Willy Maley

William Timothy "Willy" Maley (born 2 December 1960, in Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish literary critic, editor, teacher and writer.

Maley is Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Glasgow, Fellow of the English Association (FEA), and founder, with Philip Hobsbaum, of Glasgow's Creative Writing programme. He is a prolific author on subjects including early modern English literature from Spenser to Milton,

From 1992–94, Willy Maley worked as a lecturer at the University of London (at Goldsmiths and Queen Mary respectively). In 1994 he moved to Glasgow University, where he was founder in 1995, with Philip Hobsbaum, of the Creative Writing Master's program. In 1997 he published three books on literary criticism and the following year and edited the Blackwell Companion to Renaissance Writing, and published a compilation of essays on James Kelman. Maley was promoted to Reader in 1998, and to Professor in 1999. To the question of how he went from drawing income support in Possilpark in 1991 to Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Glasgow in eight years, Maley replied: "You mean, What took me so long? I was busy."

Willy Maley has taught at Dartmouth College and the University of Sunderland. He was the first recipient of the Gerard Manley Hopkins Visiting Professorship at John Carroll University in Cleveland (1998).

In 2003, Maley was presented with the Lifting Up the World Award by Sri Chinmoy at a ceremony at Edinburgh University. During seasons 2003–04, and 2004–05, Maley was a columnist for the Celtic View, the official magazine of Celtic Football Club, which he has supported since childhood. Maley has also worked extensively–but not expensively–in radio, television and film since 1985, when he was credited as Assistant Production Accountant on Derek Jarman's film Caravaggio.

Maley's poem, "On My Father’s Refusal to Renew his Subscription to The Beijing Review", first published in PN Review in 2006, was selected by Alan Spence and the Scottish Poetry Library as one of the Best Scottish Poems 2007.

Publications Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534–1660 (1993) (co-edited with Brendan Bradshaw and Andrew Hadfield) A Spenser Chronology (1994) Postcolonial Criticism (1997) (co-edited with Bart Moore-Gilbert and Gareth Stanton) Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity (1997) A View of the Present State of Ireland: From the First Published Edition (1997) (co-edited with Andrew Hadfield) Irish Studies and Postcolonial Theory, special issue of Irish Studies Review 7, 2 (1999) (co-editor, with Colin Graham) Kelman and Commitment, a special issue of the Edinburgh Review 108 (2001) (co-editor, with Ellen-Raïssa Jackson) Nation, State and Empire in English Renaissance Literature: Shakespeare to Milton (2003) British Identities and English Renaissance Literature (2002) (co-edited with David J. Baker) Shakespeare and Scotland (2004) (co-edited with Andrew Murphy) Class, a special issue of Drouth 18 (2005) (Guest Editor) 100 Best Scottish Books (2005) (co-edited with Brian Donaldson) Spheres of Influence: Intellectual and Cultural Publics from Shakespeare to Habermas (2006) (co-edited with Alex Benchimol)