Q&A with author Joy Williams

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Joy Williams was born in Massachusetts in 1944. She grew up in Maine, then attended college and graduate school in the Midwest. She is the author of four novels, two works of non-fiction and several short-story collections, the latest of which is The Visiting Privilege. She has always kept German Shepherd dogs and spends most of her time in Arizona and Wyoming.

Who would you like to sit next to at a dinner party?

I would like to return to the 1950s seated between my mother and father celebrating some happiness.

What music helps you write?

The piano music of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann played by Cecil Lytle.

Where do you write best?

A cabin in Wyoming.

What keeps you awake at night?

The plight of elephants.

If you could own any work of art what would it be?

A John Chamberlain sculpture.

What is your current favourite word?

Mephitic. But hibernaculum is lovely.

When did you know you were going to be a writer?

I read Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel in school and thought, “I can’t do this but I really really want to.”

What are you most proud of writing?

An essay, “The Killing Game”, which was published in Esquire and drove hunters nuts.

What books are on your bedside table?

American Religious Poems: An Anthology by Harold Bloom; Philip Levine’s My Lost Poets and The Last Shift; Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison; Rattlesnakes of Arizona published by Ecouniverse.

What book would you give your own child?

The Chronicles of Narniaby CS Lewis.

What are you scared of?

Trump and his minions.

When were you happiest?

I was pretty happy when I was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

What does it mean to be a writer?
Will Blythe put together a collection of replies to this question in the anthology Why I Write. I grappled with it there. My last paragraph: “Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve — hopelessly he writes in the hope that he might serve — not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace that knows us.”

Joy Williams’ ‘The Visiting Privilege’ is published by Tuskar Rock