Information about the Author

John Williams was born on August 29, 1922, in Clarksville, Texas. He served in the United States Army Air Force in China, Burma, and India from 1942 to 1945. Swallow Press published his first novel, Nothing But the Night, in 1948, as well as his first poetry collection, The Broken Landscape, in 1949. Macmillan published Williams' second novel, Butcher's Crossing, in 1960. After earning his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Denver and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri, Williams returned to the University of Denver in 1954, where he taught literature and writing for thirty years. In 1963, Williams received a fellowship to study at the University of Oxford, where he was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship that allowed him to travel and research for his final novel, Augustus, which was published in 1972. John Williams passed away on March 4, 1994, in Arkansas.