book reviews for The Philadelphia Bulletin. Ashmead published on Bernard Malamud, Mark Twain, among several American authors. He died of lymphoma on February 7, 1992 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and was buried in Windsor, CT. Students who became authors Ashmead taught a group of students mainly at Haverford College who through his encouragement and guidance, went on to become published authors themselves, including Ashmead's student John Davison (composer) with whom he published a book about Robert Burns, Ashmead's student Claudine Monteil who published on Simone de Beauvoir and Ashmead's student Frank Conroy who Ashmead recommended to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop. Frank Conroy later wrote a story about John Ashmead in GQ titled "My Tormented Mentor", and later republished as "My Teacher" in his publication of collected stories Dogs Bark in the Night but the Caravans Move On. Conroy took Creative Writing classes with Ashmead while at Haverford College, and later attributed to Ashmead that the method of how he taught creative writing was the way he taught creative writing at the Iowa Writer's Workshop where Conroy himself influenced, inspired and encouraged a whole new generation of American writers. Other Haverford College English students include Dave Barry. Circle of Authors Ashmead became acquainted and friends with a circle of authors including Masao Kume and Yasunari Kawabata who he met and befriended during the Occupation of Japan in mid-1940s, G.V. Desani and P. Lal who he met in 1964-1965 while teaching on a Fulbright in India and working for the Asia Society and the Indian Studies Center then at the University of Pennsylvania to produce an Anthology on Modern Indian Short Fiction, Wright Morris and later L. Sprague de Camp, and Isaac Asimov, and the Scottish poet Iain Crichton Smith, among others. Network of U.S. Navy Japanese Language School graduates and intellectuals Ashmead maintained a network of contacts with key administrators and graduates of the World War II U.S. Navy Japanese Language School which began at Harvard and later migrated to Berkeley, California, and ultimately Boulder, Colorado. These friends and student-war personnel colleagues include Serge Elisséeff, Donald Keene, Otis Cary, Leslie A. Feidler, Marion J. Levy, Jr., Jonas Barish and Beate Sirota Gordon who went on after World War II, to become leading intellectuals in their academic fields. Degrees Harvard B.A. 1938 M.A. 1939 Ph.D. 1950 Books and articles The Mountain and the Feather Who Sleep on Brambles The Songs of