Joy Williams (writer)

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Joy Williams

Born February 11, 1944 (1944-02-11) (age 64)
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
Occupation Novelist, short story writer, essayist
Nationality American
Writing period 1973 - present
Genres Literary fiction
Influences
Influenced

Joy Williams (born February 11, 1944) is an American author of fiction.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Williams is the author of four novels. Her first, State of Grace (1973), was nominated for a National Book Award for Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Quick and the Dead (2000), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her first collection of short stories was Taking Care, published in 1982. A second collection, Escapes, followed in 1990. A 2001 essay collection, Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Honored Guest, a collection of short stories, was published in 2004. A 30th anniversary reprint of The Changeling will be issued in 2008.[1]

Her stories and essays are frequently anthologized, and she has received many awards and honors, including the Harold and Mildred Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rea Award for the Short Story.

Williams was born in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.[2] She received a BA from Marietta College and a MFA from the University of Iowa. She has taught creative writing at the University of Houston, the University of Florida, the University of Iowa, and the University of Arizona.[3] She lives in Key West, Florida, and Tucson, Arizona.

[edit] Writing

Williams's fiction often portrays life as a downward spiral, and the failure of life in America, from a spiritual as well as economic perspective, as a virtual certainty. Her characters, generally from the Middle Class, frequently fall from it, at times in bizarre fashion, in a form of cultural dispossession.[4] Characters are usually divorced, children are abandoned, and their lives are consumed with fear, often irrational, such as the little girl in the story "The Excursion" who is terrified that birds will fly out of her toilet bowl.[5]

[edit] Published work

[edit] Novels

  • State of Grace (1973)
  • The Changeling (1978)
  • Breaking and Entering (1988)
  • The Quick and the Dead (2000)

[edit] Story collections

  • Taking Care (1982)
  • Escapes (1990)
  • Honored Guest (2004)

[edit] Nonfiction

  • Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals (essays) (2001)
  • The Florida Keys: A History & Guide, illustrated by Robert Carawan (Tenth Edition) (2003)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ [Fairy Tale Review Press, September 13, 2007][1]
  2. ^ "The Writer's Almanac: Saturday, 11 February, 2006" by Garrison Keillor. The Writer's Almanac from American Public Media (February 2006). Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  3. ^ "Joy Williams". www.ReaAward.org (Undated). Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  4. ^ Thompson, Carolyn Chute and Joy Williams, 209, 218
  5. ^ Gelfant, Columbia Companion, 574.

[edit] References

  • The Writer's Almanac: Saturday, 11 February, 2006 by Garrison Keillor. The Writer's Almanac from American Public Media (February 2006). Retrieved on 2007 April 12.
  • Gelfant, Blanche. The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
  • Thompson, James R. Carolyn Chute and Joy Williams: Alternate Voices of Rage and Curious Dismay, in Constructing the Eighties: Versions of an American Decade, eds. Walter Grunzweig, Roberta Maierhofer, Adolf Wimmer. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1992.


Persondata
NAME Williams, Joy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Novelist, short story writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Chelmsford, Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH