Henry Alley is a Professor Emeritus of Literature in the Honors College at the University of Oregon. 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), Men Touching (Chelsea Station Editions, 2019) as well as a collection of stories, The Dahlia Field (Chelsea Station Editions, 2017). For nearly half a century, such journals as Seattle Review, Outerbridge, Virginia Quarterly Review, Chelsea Station Review and Virginia Woolf Quarterly have published his short fiction. His stories have been the recipient of awards from Gertrude Press as well as Ooligan Press. More recently, in 2017 he was included in Best Gay Stories and was awarded a Mill House Residency by Writing by Writers.

His essays have appeared in The Journal of Narrative Technique, Studies in the Novel, Twentieth Century Literature, Kenyon Review, and Papers on Language and Literature. In 1997, The University of Delaware Press published his book-length study, The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George Eliot. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, with the writer and teacher Austin Gray, and has been a member of the local Lane Literary Guild for thirty-five years.

Of his new collection, The Dahlia Field, Kirkus Review has written,"With sensitivity and deadpan humor, Alley’s luminous stories explore a wealth of characters and social types thrown into fertile combinations. His prose is limpid and straightforward, laced with droll psychology . . . and sometimes opening into an evocative, elegiac poetry . . . . The results are funny, poignant, and engrossing. . . . A fine collection that explores and celebrates the ebb and flow of gay life."--(starred review)

Of his recent novel, 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.”