Paige Williams

Paige Williams is an American journalist and author. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Williams held a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, and her work has won a National Magazine Award for feature writing. She has served as editor of Nieman Storyboard and has taught classes in narrative writing for the Nieman Foundation.

Williams' work is included in the 2009 and 2011 editions of The Best American Magazine Writing and the 2003 and 2006 editions of The Best American Crime Writing. Her 2013 New Yorker article "Bones of Contention" explored the black-market fossil trade. The story was expanded into a book titled The Dinosaur Artist, published by the Hachette Book Group in 2018. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Mississippi, where she was a member of the Chi Omega sorority. She holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University.

In June 2015, Williams joined the writing staff of The New Yorker.

Works

"You Have Thousands of Angels Around You"

Williams' article for Atlanta Magazine chronicles the story of a Burundian woman, Cynthia Siyamvo, who came to the United States seeking political asylum. The story examines the violence between the Tutsi and Hutu peoples that has driven Cynthia from her home as well as the challenges refugees face acclimating to their new communities.

"You Have Thousands of Angels Around You," earned Williams a National Magazine Award in the category of feature writing, the first of this award for Atlanta Magazine. The American Society of Magazine Editors praised the style and originality of the reporting, while also recognizing editor-in-chief Rebecca Burns for her work on the feature.

"Finding Dolly Freed" In a Wired blog post, Williams says she began developing a story about Dolly Freed in late April 2009. Freed experienced brief cult fame when, at the age of 18, she published the book Possum Living: How to Live Well Without A Job and (Almost) No Money. Soon after, she began avoiding public attention. Williams managed to track down Freed in order to profile her, but had difficulty pitching the story to publications. She settled on hosting the story herself online, including a PayPal link to support the story through a pay what you want pricing strategy. She described the project as an example of "Radiohead journalism," referencing the model used to release the band's album In Rainbows. After 39 days, 160 readers had donated a total of $1,500. However, Williams concluded the visitor to donation ratio made the model unsustainable.

"Bones of Contention" "Bones of Contention" was originally published in the January 28, 2013 issue of The New Yorker. The inspiration for the story came to Williams after she read an article in a Montana newspaper about an incidence of fossil theft Williams' article details fossil trader Eric Prokopi's efforts to sell a Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton. Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj filed suit against Prokopi, claiming the fossils had been smuggled from a Mongolian dig site.

Prokopi says the fossils had been shipped to him by British dealer Chris Moore, who listed the skeleton's origin as Great Britain on customs forms.

Awards and honors 1997 Nieman Fellowship 2008 National Magazine Award 2015 MacDowell Colony's James S. Carroll Fellowship

Critical studies and reviews of Williams' work The dinosaur artist