William Paul Cook (August 31, 1881 – January 22, 1948) was a writer, printer and publisher.
He wrote under his own name and the pseudonym Willis T. Crossman, and was a leading figure in amateur journalism.
[1] He met Lovecraft through the National Amateur Press Association, and quickly became a champion of his weird fiction, some of which was first published in Cook's journal, The Vagrant.
Cook also broadened Lovecraft's familiarity with supernatural literature by loaning him books and encouraging a systematic study of the field that resulted in Lovecraft's famous essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," which was first published in Cook's The Recluse (1927), of which only a single issue was published.
Leland Hawes and Sean Donnelly edited a collection of regional stories that Cook wrote under a pseudonym, Willis T. Crossman's Vermont: Stories by W. Paul Cook (published by the University of Tampa Press).