Dear visitors,

Thanks so much for taking time to look through this website dedicated to my work. The long journey of an artist’s life can be a solitary one, but I have always found it more enjoyable because you are here with me.

This site contains information about my books, music, and life. I continue to do what I have done every day for the past 40 years: I get up early and write. For decades, I went to my day-job after that, first as a newspaper editor and then as a science writer and adjunct professor of creative writing for the University of Georgia. I am now retired from UGA, and yet the urge to create remains powerful for me.

The latest of my works, Emerson’s Brother, came out in the spring of 2012. Unlike The Divine Comics, it is a tender, touching, and, I believe, very moving book about the world of those around us who are “different.”

My most recent novel, The Divine Comics: A Vaudeville Show in Three Acts, came out in November 2011, and it is a book on which I worked for some 30 years. It’s a jangling caravan of characters and plots, acting out a modern version of Dante’s Divine Comedy, a work that shattered me (for the right reasons!) when I was a sophomore in college. I think in time TDC will gain recognition as an unusual and giddy attempt to organize and make sense of what makes us human here in the early 21st century.

So thank you for visiting and caring about my work. Think of me walking beside you at the edge of a beautiful mountain stream and telling you in person how much your support and kindness mean to me.

Hope and happiness,

Philip Lee Williams

Symphony No. 17: Tenebrae

This symphony is subtitled "Tenebrae," which is a religious service in the Christian church but literally means "shadows" or "darkness" in Latin. It is a quiet, contemplative symphony, a single movement for full orchestra. (29'48")

Symphony No. 18: For the Civil Rights Martyrs

This work is subtitled "For the Civil Rights Martyrs" and is in memory of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, murdered in Mississippi in the summer of 1964 while working for Civil Rights. It is also in memory of all who died in the struggle. It is in two movements, "The Lynching" and "Souls."

One: The Lynching (15'25")

Two: Souls (14'25")