Thomas Williams

Born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1926,  Williams' family moved to New Hampshire when he was a child, and he spent most of his life working and writing in that state, although he attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Chicago, and studied briefly in Paris. For most of his career he taught at the University of New Hampshire, and published eight novels during his lifetime. One of the students Williams tutored during his long tenure at New Hampshire was the novelist John Irving,[ who wrote an introduction to a posthumous collection of Williams's collected stories, Leah, New Hampshire (1992)

Williams lived in Durham, NH and died of lung cancer at a hospital in Dover, NH when he was 63. In 2011, The Hair of Harold Roux was reissued, sparking a renewed interest in his work.