He was America’s greatest living novelist. She was a young college student in love with literature and hungry for answers to questions she found alive in his work. They met, and began a relationship that ended with her marriage to another man, though their friendship continued until the novelist’s death.
A native of Memphis, Tennessee, JOAN WILLIAMS had her first short story published in Mademoiselle as a winner in its College Fiction Contest in 1949. She graduated from Bard College the following year and since that time has worked in a New Orleans bookstore and at Bard College as Assistant Director of Admissions. Miss Williams is now living in New York, where she is on the staff of Look Magazine.