Come in the house

Welcome to the website of award-winning writer Philip Lee Williams, author of 16 published books including novels, poetry, and essays. We’re delighted you stopped by, and remember that Philip is always glad to hear from readers at philipleewilliams@gmail.com.

Philip’s latest book is the ambitious and hilarious epic novel called The Divine Comics: A Vaudeville Show in Three Acts, which was published late in 2011. This 1000-page tour de force is a modern-day reimagining of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and is among the longest novels ever published in the U.S. It is for sale everywhere, online and at bookstores.

Williams’s next book, Emerson’s Brother, a new novel, will be out late this spring. A deeply moving book of letters between noted essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and his mentally unwell brother Bulkeley, it has already drawn praise from the former president of the international Thoreau and Emerson societies.

In the fall of 2010, Philip’s critically acclaimed book The Flower Seeker: An Epic Poem of William Bartram came out. It was named national Book of the Year by the literary journal Books and Culture and also earned Williams a fourth Georgia Author of the Year Award. All three of the above books were published by Mercer University Press. You may read a transcript of Philip’s interview with Books and Culture here or listen to a podcast here.

In April 2011, the University of Georgia Press published a new paper edition of Williams’s Civil War novel A Distant Flame. When this novel was originally published by St. Martin’s in 2004, it won the Michael Shaara Prize as the best Civil War novel published in the United States that year.

In addition to his work as a novelist, Williams is an accomplished composer, with some 18 symphonies to his credit, along with seven concerti and numerous other pieces. He has also been a visual artist since he was a teenager.

In February 2012, Williams retired from the University of Georgia, where he had been a writer and taught creative writing for nearly 27 years. Though he no longer does speeches or autographings, he is pleased to interact with readers and is always available for interviews.