Eleanor WilliamsFRSL is a British writer.[1] Her debut collection of prose, Attrib. and Other Stories (Influx Press, 2017), was awarded the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize[2] and the 2017 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.[3] Her writing has also been anthologised in The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story (Penguin Classics, 2018),[4]Liberating the Canon (Dostoevsky Wannabe, 2018)[5] and Not Here: A Queer Anthology of Loneliness (Pilot Press, 2017).[6]
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."[10]Stuart Kelly in a review in The Spectator 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."[11]
Williams's stories "Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good" (2018) and "Moonlighting" (2019) have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 under the Short Works strand, and her story "Scrimshaw" was a finalist for the 2020 BBC National Short Story Award.[12] A 10-part radio series Gambits, based around the theme of chess, was broadcast on Radio 4 beginning in November 2021.[13]
Early and personal life
Williams' given name is Eleanor; the unusual spelling of Eley came from school. She grew up with two sisters.[14] Williams graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge. She lives in West Oxfordshire with her wife Nell Stevens.[15]
In 2023, Williams was named on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, compiled every 10 years since 1983, identifying the 20 most significant British novelists aged under 40.[16][17]
