Eley Williams

Her writing has also been anthologised in The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story (Penguin Classics, 2018), Liberating the Canon (Dostoevsky Wannabe, 2018) and Not Here: A Queer Anthology of Loneliness (Pilot Press, 2017). Williams is an alumna of the MacDowell Workshop and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She taught at Royal Holloway, University of London, and supervises Jungftak, a journal for contemporary prose poetry. Her first novel, The Liar's Dictionary, was published in 2020, described in The Guardian as a "virtuoso performance full of charm.. A glorious novel – a perfectly crafted investigation of our ability to define words and their power to define us." Stuart Kelly in a review in The Spectator wrote of the book: "It deals with love as something which cannot be put into words, and dare not speak its name (done neither stridently nor sentimentally). It is, in short, a delight." Williams's stories "Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good" (2018) and "Moonlighting" (2019) have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 under the Short Works strand, and her story "Scrimshaw" was a finalist for the 2020 BBC National Short Story Award. A 10-part radio series Gambits, based around the theme of chess, was broadcast on Radio 4 beginning in November 2021.

• Name — Eley Williams • Honorific Suffix — FRSL • Occupation — Writer • Birth Name — Eleanor Williams • Education — Selwyn College, Cambridge • Spouse — Nell Stevens • Awards — James Tait Black Memorial Prize (2017) Republic of Consciousness Prize (2018) Betty Trask Award (2021) • Language — English

Williams' given name is Eleanor; the unusual spelling of Eley came from school. She grew up with two sisters. Williams graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge. She lives in West Oxfordshire with her wife Nell Stevens.

• The Liar's Dictionary (2020)

• "In pursuit of the swan at Brentford Ait", essay in An Unreliable Guide to London, edited by Kit Caless and Gary Budden (2016) • "Of Père Lachaise, On Business", in We'll Never Have Paris, edited by Andrew Gallix (2019) • "To Plot, Plan, Redress", on the Rebecca Riots 1839, in Resist: Stories of Uprising (2019) • "Scrimshaw", story anthologised in Still Worlds Turning (2019)

• Eley Williams on Goodreads * • Eley Williams The Books of My Life at The Guardian • Profile at C&W • Profile at Profession Writing Academy • Profile at Penguin Random House • Profile at Granta