Diane Williams (born 1946) is an American author, primarily of short stories. She lives in New York City and edits the literary annual NOON.
She is the author of six books, including her selected stories published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1998. Her most recent book, It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature, was released in 2007 by Fiction Collective Two. Dalkey also published ROMANCER ERECTOR: "Crafty, screwball, profound describes Diane Williams's ROMANCER ERECTOR, a trio of novellas and dozens of short stories featuring playful titles like 'I Freshly Fleshly'".[1]
Her books have been reviewed in many publications, including the New York Times Book Review ("An operation worthy of a master spy, a double agent in the house of fiction")[2] and The Los Angeles Times ("One of America's most exciting violators of habit is [Diane] Williams…the extremity that Williams depicts and the extremity of the depiction evoke something akin to the pity and fear that the great writers of antiquity considered central to literature. Her stories, by removing you from ordinary literary experience, place you more deeply in ordinary life. 'Isn't ordinary life strange?' they ask, and in so asking, they revivify and console.”)[3]
Jonathan Franzen describes her as "one of the true living heroes of the American avant-garde. Her fiction makes very familiar things very, very weird." [1] Ben Marcus suggested that her "outrageous and ferociously strange stories test the limits of behavior, of manners, of language, and mark Diane Williams as a startlingly original writer worthy of our closest attention."[4]
Williams was the publisher and co-editor of StoryQuarterly from 1985 to 1997. She has been the publisher and founding editor of NOON since 2000. On October 30, 2009, The Times Literary Supplement reviewed NOON in its Learned Journals. Alison Kelly wrote,
[T]he best stories in NOON are, indeed, stunning, in the sense that they leave one conscious of powerful meanings not yet fully absorbed. . . . [T]he journal has proved its staying power and achieved a respected position. . . NOON has intellectual weight. Over the years it has investigated, and pushed the boundaries of, the means and processes of communication. . . . Williams's editorial vision ensures the intelligence and integrity of the journal as a whole.
Williams taught at Bard College, Syracuse University and The Center for Fiction in New York City.
Contents |
| Title | Year | First published in | Reprinted in |
|---|---|---|---|
| My First Real Home | 2008 | Post Road 16 (Fall/Win 2008) | Harper's Magazine 318/1904 (Jan 2009) |