John Williams

John Williams was an American writer and teacher, born in Clarksville, Texas, in 1922 and died in 1994. He spent most of his working life as a university teacher of English and creative writing, and he edited an anthology of Renaissance poetry. He wrote poems and four novels, among them the western Butcher's Crossing and the historical novel Augustus, which shared the National Book Award in 1973. His best-known work is Stoner, a quiet novel about an academic life. It sold modestly on first publication in 1965, but it found a large international readership decades later, helped by new editions and translations. Williams is admired for clear, restrained prose and for his attention to ordinary lives, work and disappointment, treated with dignity and compassion.