Thomas Williams

Thomas Williams (November 15, 1926 – October 23, 1990) was an American novelist. He won one U.S. National Book Award for Fiction—The Hair of Harold Roux split the 1975 award with Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers —and his last published novel, The Moon Pinnace (1986), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Williams and his family moved to New Hampshire when he was a child and he spent most of his life working and writing in that state, although he attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Chicago, and studied briefly in Paris. For most of his career he taught at the University of New Hampshire, and published eight novels during his lifetime. His students included among them Alice McDermott and John Irving. Irving wrote an introduction to a posthumous collection of Williams's collected stories, Leah, New Hampshire (1992).

Williams lived in Durham, New Hampshire and died of lung cancer at a hospital in Dover, New Hampshire when he was 63.

Reception and legacy Because he'd received one of the major US book awards in 1975 and because he was admired as a university writing instructor (as some of his former students can attest), Thomas Williams was a figure of some regard during the 1970s and 1980s when it seems his reputation had reached its peak. Stephen King, who had earlier dedicated his 1993 story collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes to Williams, said in a 2011 interview that The Hair of Harold Roux has remained, over the years, one of his favorite books, and one he returns to "again and again."

Selected bibliography

Fiction Ceremony of Love. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill (1955) Town Burning. New York: Macmillan (1959) (reissue: paperback). Anchor Books, 1988. The Night of Trees. New York: Macmillan (1961) (reissue: paperback). Ampersand Press & Small Press Distribution (1989). Introduction by John Irving. A High New House. New York: Dial Press (1963) – Williams received the "Dial Press Fellowship Award for Fiction" for this collection of short stories Whipple's Castle: An American Novel. New York: Random House (1968) (reissue: paperback). Anchor Books, 1988. The Hair of Harold Roux. New York: Random House (1974) Tsuga's Children. New York: Random House (1977) The Followed Man. New York, NY: Richard Marek (1978) The Moon Pinnace. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company (1986) (reissue: paperback). Anchor Books, 1988. Posthumous publications Leah, New Hampshire: The Collected Stories of Thomas Williams. New York: William Morrow and Company (1992) (Trade Paperback). Graywolf Press, 1993. Introduction by John Irving. The Hair of Harold Roux. Bloomsbury USA (2011; reissue) with an Introduction by Andre Dubus III, Afterword by Ann Joslin Williams.