Diane Williams

"In Williams' stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful, and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally bombastic wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility"--...

"Williams delivers visionary insights into what it means to be human in stories as short as one or two pages. Her startling sentences often function like wake-up trumpet blasts, and her latest collection of ultra-short masterworks is a container for the elliptical, the magisterial, the voluptuous, and the profane. Set in cafés and houses, taxicabs and gardens, the stories of Diane Williams, "the godmother of flash fiction" (The Paris Review), deliver...

"Blues legend B. B. King spent his life sharing the music of his soul, which shone relentlessly through hardship and triumph alike. He never wavered from his vocation, even as he gathered up other musicians in his wake and melded them into the harmony of his animating passion. In this intimate portrait of King, author Diane Williams offers a brief account of the monumental blues man's life before settling in for a series of interviews with his bandmates...