Eley Williams is a British writer. Her debut collection of prose, ''Attrib. and Other Stories'' (

Influx Press Influx Press is an independent British publishing company, based in north London, founded in 2012 by Gary Budden and Kit Caless. They are known for publishing "innovative and challenging fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction from across the UK ...

, 2017), was awarded the

Republic of Consciousness Prize The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses is an annual British literary prize founded by the author Neil Griffiths. It rewards fiction published by UK and Irish small presses, defined as those with fewer than five full-time employees ...

and the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Unit ...

2018. With writing anthologised in ''The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story'' (

Penguin Classics Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the Western ...

, 2018), ''Liberating the Canon'' (Dostoevsky Wannabe, 2018) and ''Not Here: A Queer Anthology of Loneliness'' (Pilot Press, 2017), she is an alumna of the MacDowell workshop and a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...

. She teaches at

Royal Holloway, University of London Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic departm ...

, 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 ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

'' 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' stories "Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good" (2018) and "Moonlighting" (2019) have been broadcast on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

under the '' Short Works'' strand, and her story "Scrimshaw" was a finalist for the 2020

BBC National Short Story Award BBC National Short Story Award is a British literary award for short stories. It was founded in 2005 by the NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) with support from BBC Radio 4 and '' Prospect'' magazine. The winner re ...

. A ten part radio series ''Gambits'', based around the theme of chess, was broadcast on Radio 4 beginning in November 2021.

Awards

* 2021:

Betty Trask Award The Betty Trask Prize and Awards are for first novels written by authors under the age of 35, who reside in a current or former Commonwealth nation. Each year the awards total £20,000, with one author receiving a larger prize amount, called the ...

* 2018: The Republic of Consciousness Prize * 2017:

* 2005: Christopher Tower Poetry Prize

Selected bibliography

* 'In pursuit of the swan at Brentford Ait', essay in ''An Unreliable Guide to London'', edited by Kit Caless and Gary Budden (2016) *''Attrib. and Other Stories'', short story collection (2017) * ''Frit'', poetry pamphlet (2017) *'Of Père Lachaise, On Business', in ''We'll Never Have Paris'', edited by Andrew Gallix (2019) *'To Plot, Plan, Redress', on the

Rebecca Riots The Rebecca Riots (Welsh: ''Terfysgoedd Beca'') took place between 1839 and 1843 in West and Mid Wales. They were a series of protests undertaken by local farmers and agricultural workers in response to levels of taxation. The rioters, often me ...

1839, in ''Resist: Stories of Uprising'' (2019) *'Scrimshaw', story anthologised in ''Still Worlds Turning'' (2019), shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2020 *''The Liar's Dictionary'', novel (2020)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Eley Academics of the University of London Alumni of Selwyn College, Cambridge English writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients Living people Year of birth missing (living people)