Pip Williams

Pip Williams (born 1969) is an Australian author and social researcher. She is best known for her debut novel The Dictionary of Lost Words, published in 2020. Her second novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, was published in 2023.

Early life and education Pip Williams was born in London, England in 1969. Her Brazilian mother worked part-time as a hairdresser and her Welsh father was a computer analyst who also wrote children's books. Williams moved with her parents and younger sister to Sydney, New South Wales, in 1972. She learnt at the age of 17 that she was dyslexic.

Career Williams worked as a social researcher at the Centre for Work and Life at the University of South Australia, where her manager was economist Barbara Pocock. She did radio production for Radio Northern Beaches and started publishing creative non-fiction in and The Australian and InDaily after moving to Adelaide in 2003. Williams worked as a community planner at Adelaide City Council. While there she helped found the Adelaide City Library.

Williams wrote much of her first novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, in the State Library of South Australia, based on her research in the Oxford English Dictionary archives. It was well-reviewed, sold well, and won several awards, including General Fiction Book of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. It was later adapted for the stage, and a TV series is being made of the novel.

Williams' second novel is The Bookbinder of Jericho, which she started writing before Dictionary was published. It has been described as a companion to the first novel, In May 2024 The Bookbinder of Jericho was awarded General Fiction Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards.

Personal life Williams met her partner, Shannon, when she was 19, and they have two sons. They moved from Sydney to a hobby farm in the Adelaide Hills in 2003, with Williams working in the city. They then went Italy for six months with their sons to work as WWOOFers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), working in Tuscany, Calabria, and Piedmont.

As of 2024 Williams lives in the Adelaide Hills.

She has dyslexia and dysgraphia.