Missouri Williams is an English novelist, playwright and editor based in Prague. She is the editor of Another Gaze, a feminist film journal,[1] and her writing has appeared in outlets such as The Nation, Baffler and Granta.[2] While her work is commonly referred to as science fiction or speculative fiction, Williams has stated she wants "no part of that".[2]
Missouri Williams | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1992 |
| Occupation |
|
| Nationality | English |
| Genre | Literary fiction, science fiction |
| Years active | 2021-present |
| Notable works |
|
Career
editWilliams wrote and directed the play King Lear with Sheep in 2015,[3] a re-telling of King Lear with sheep as it's primary performers.[4]
That same year, she penned a personal essay in Granta detailing how a series of seizures in her temporal lobe impacted her writing.[5] The cause of this condition is not publicly known. Disability, it's impacts and how it relates to characters worlds has been cited as a key aspect of Williams' work.[6]
Williams' debut novel, The Doloriad, was released in 2022 to mostly positive reviews.[7] A literary fiction, science fiction, horror blend, the novel tells the story of "The Matriarch" ruling her family in the wake of an unknown cataclysm. The novel received the Republic of Consciousness Prize (2023)[8] and her writing drew comparisons to writers such as William Faulkner and classical mythology.[9] In an interview with TriQuarterly, Williams's style was similarly compared to that of László Krasznahorkai.[1] The novel was shortlisted for the First Novelist Award[10] and named a Sunday Times[11] and Vulture Book of the Year.[12]
Her second novel is forthcoming. The Vivisectors is described as a satirical campus novel[13] and is based on a previously published short-story in Astra magazine.[14] The novel was subject to an eight-way publisher auction.[13][15]
Bibliography
edit- The Doloriad (Farrar, Straus and Giroux in US, Dead Ink Books in UK, 2022)
- The Vivisectors (Fourth Estate (imprint) in UK, forthcoming, Farrar, Straus and Giroux in US, 2025)
References
edit- ^ a b Nathan Stormer (4 March 2022). "Aggressive Mirroring: An Interview with Missouri Williams". TriQuarterly.
- ^ a b Nolan Kelly (4 March 2022). "In a Lonely Place (Interviews)". BookForum.
- ^ Ruth Comerford (15 January 2021). "Dead Ink bags Missouri's dystopian debut". The Bookseller.
- ^ Ben Norum (15 July 2015). "King Lear With Sheep: Shakespeare play performed by sheep in Hoxton". The Standard.
- ^ Missouri Williams (22 June 2022). "Notes on Craft". Granta.
- ^ Galant Laura, Justyna (22 August 2023). ""Something Else Already Opening up." The Utopian Impulse and the Novum of Disability in Missouri Williams's The Doloriad". Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction: 8. doi:10.1080/00111619.2023.2250249. Retrieved 7 August 2024.
- ^ Ian Mond (2 August 2022). "Ian Mond Reviews The Doloriad by Missouri Williams". Locus Magazine.
- ^ Lucy Knight (26 April 2023). "Dead Ink wins Republic of Consciousness prize with Missouri Williams's 'astonishing' debut". The Guardian.
- ^ J. Robert Lennon (1 March 2022). "In a Debut Novel, Humans Are Scarce and Humanity Is Scarcer". The New York Times.
- ^ "VCU Cabell First Novelist contest announces top 20 titles". 3 April 2023.
- ^ Jessie Lethaby (28 November 2022). "These speculative reads are out of this world". The Times.
- ^ "The Best Books of 2022 Yes, this list features more than one book set in a postapocalyptic world, but have you looked around lately?". Vulture Magazine. 3 January 2023.
- ^ a b Matilda Battersby (15 July 2024). "4th Estate wins eight-way auction for satirical campus novel by Missouri Williams". The Bookseller.
- ^ Missouri Williams (2 July 2022). "The Vivisectors". Astra Mag.
- ^ Rosa Lyster (15 March 2024). "Welcome to the London Book Fair, Where Everyone Knows Their Place". The New York Times.