Writer and poet Philip F. Deaver passed away last month at a hospice in Orlando, Florida. He was seventy-one years old.

Deaver was the author of How Men Pray and Silent Retreats and winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. He was writer-in-residence and associate professor of English at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. 

He edited Scoring from Second: Writers on Baseball (Nebraska, 2007), which explored what attracts so many writers and thinkers to the great American sport.

Todd Starkweather of American Book Review wrote that the book had “insightful observations about a sport that has a richer literary tradition than any other sport in the US. . . . The entries’ ability to remain fresh and entertaining speaks well of their quality and Deaver’s discernment.”