About
Theresa Williams teaches literature and creative writing at Bowling Green State University. She has also taught writing workshops at Esalen in Big Sur, California.
She is the recipient of a $10,000 Individual Excellence Grant from the Ohio Arts Council. In 2008 she was selected as a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Summer Residency program artist. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her novel, The Secret of Hurricanes was a finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize. more bio...
Theresa at Library Thing
Theresa also has a profile on Facebook.
Thoughts on writing...
Click here to access Theresa's Blog.
From Theresa's blog...
Humans, like crows, are inclined to collect things. Stamps, bottles, butterflies, bugs. Stories. We have our personal stories, of course, Aunt Millie finding love or Uncle Bill getting drunk every Christmas. The time I fell into my mother's washbucket.
What I mean is published stories, those we collect in book form, those we take from the shelf when we ache for wholeness. We collect stories because we love them. We remember the adrenaline rush we received when we first read them. We collect stories because we are human, because we are like the crows. We decorate our nests with stories. We cock our heads, like crows, admiring our obsession. We know that inside the story, all is well.
Given the truth of this, I wonder how anybody talks about a story without her heart bursting from joy.
Find selections by Theresa in The Sun here.
About The Sun:
The Sun is an independent, ad-free monthly magazine that for more than thirty years has used words and photographs to invoke the splendor and heartache of being human. The Sun celebrates life, but not in a way that ignores its complexity. The personal essays, short stories, interviews, poetry, and photographs that appear in its pages explore the challenges we face and the moments when we rise to meet those challenges.
The Sun publishes the work of emerging and established artists who are striving to be thoughtful and authentic. Writing from The Sun has won the Pushcart Prize, been published in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays, and been broadcast on National Public Radio.
The Secret of Hurricanes
Recommended for serious readers of contemporary fiction, especially in an academic environment.-- Debbie Bogenschutz, Library Journal
In simple and sedate prose, Williams fashions an emotional hurricane that sweeps into the life of a young girl who grapples to hold on to whatever limb is extended to her. Dysfunctional families, murder, and excruciating loneliness are at the core of this melancholy but very well written novel. -- Elsa Gaztambide, Booklist
It's a pity that Oprah has shuttered her book club, since this first novel about a woman overcoming a fractured past might have found a home with her. From the works of Flannery O'Connor to Denis Johnson, Southern literature has made a special place for eccentrics, and this solid debut...bears out that connection. --Publisher's Weekly
Theresa Williams has the knack for making inhuman events utterly humane, sorrowful happenings funny, and silly things poignant. But above all she has mastered the accomplished poet's two most dangerous tasks as a first novelist: trusting the reader and taking one's time. --Howard Buten, author of When I Was Five I Killed Myself