The Way We Live Now

William Moses Hoffman was born in Manhattan, New York on April 12, 1939. He received a bachelor's degree in English and Latin from the City College of New York. He began his career as a book editor at Hill and Wang, where he published gay and lesbian playwrights in the New American Plays series and in the 1979 anthology Gay Plays: The First Collection. He was a professor of journalism, communication and theater at Lehman College of the City University of New York.

He wrote or co-wrote several plays including Cornbury: The Queen's Governor written with Anthony Holland, Riga, and As Is, which won the 1985 Drama Desk and Obie Awards for outstanding new production. He adapted the play for television in 1986. He wrote the libretto for John Corigliano's opera The Ghosts of Versailles. He also wrote for the daytime soap opera One Life to Live. He died of cardiac arrest on April 29, 2017 at the age of 78.

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