Biography
Philip Lee Williams was born in 1950, one of three children of Ruth Sisk Williams (1924–2008) and Marshall Woodson Williams (1922- ). He, his parents, and his older brother John Mark Williams (1948- ), moved to Madison, Georgia, in 1953, where Marshall Williams had accepted a job as a chemistry teacher at Morgan County High School. Williams also has a sister, Laura Jane Williams, born in 1959.
Williams began his creative work by composing music and writing poetry while still in his teens. He graduated from Morgan County High School in 1968 and from the University of Georgia in 1972 with a degree in journalism and minors in history and English. In 1972, he married Linda Rowley. They have two children, Brandon and Megan.
He finished more than half of his master’s degree in English at the University of Georgia before sustaining a serious back injury in 1974. After that, he spent 13 years as an award-winning journalist before becoming a science writer at his alma mater in 1985. As a journalist he worked for The Clayton Tribune (Clayton, Georgia), the Athens Daily News (Athens, Ga.), The Madisonian (Madison, Ga.), and The Athens Observer (Athens, Ga.)
Williams retired in 2010 from the University of Georgia, where he was a writer and taught creative writing.
In 2010, Williams was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, alongside such luminaries as Flannery O'Connor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., James Dickey, and fellow University of Georgia graduate Natasha Trethewey.
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