William Packard (September 2, 1933 – November 3, 2002) was an American poet, playwright, teacher, novelist, and was also founder and editor of the New York Quarterly, a national poetry magazine.

It is written with “a sharp yet loving bite … Picture the pace of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' plus caricature worthy of Portnoy,” according to the New York Times.

It was produced Off-Broadway with Beatrice Straight and Mildred Dunnock, and directed by Paul-Emile Deiber; a production which Stanley Kauffmann of the New York Times referred to as “the best performance in English of a classic French tragedy that I have seen.”.

[12] Beginning in 1965, when he inherited from Louise Bogan the poetry writing classes at New York University's Washington Square Writing Center, Packard taught poetry and literature at NYU, Wagner, The New School, Cooper Union, The Bank Street Theatre, and Hofstra, as well as acting, and playwriting at the HB Studio in Manhattan.

Cited by Rolling Stone as "the most important poetry magazine in America," the New York Quarterly earned a reputation for excellence by publishing poems, and for its “exceptional in-depth interviews”[17] with the prominent poets W. H. Auden, John Ashbery, Paul Blackburn, Richard Eberhart, Stanley Kunitz, Anne Sexton, Franz Douskey, Charles Bukowski, and W.S.

The poet Galway Kinnell once said of the magazine, "The New York Quarterly serves an invaluable function — and that is finding and publishing wonderful talents — such as Franz Douskey, Antler, Pennant, Lifshin, Inez, Moriarty — who may not have the recognition that their work so richly deserves.