Williams’ (he/him) poems explore Black surrealism, folklore, and spirituality. Using lyrical, narrative, and dramatic poetic forms, he writes about loneliness, desire, doubt, memory, and “the borderline between beauty and tragedy.” He employs non-linearity in a variety of ways, condensing layers of meaning into a single line and exploring notions of cyclical, inverted, or otherwise flexible interpretations of time. His publications include two books of poetry, Mutiny (an American Book Award winner) and Thief in the Interior, several chapbooks, and a forthcoming debut novel, Ours. His poetry has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, among other publications. Williams earned an MFA in creative writing from Washington University in St. Louis and a BA in English from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
