Joy Williams is the author of five novels, including The Quick and the Dead and most recently Harrow, five collections of stories, including Ninety-Nine Stories of God, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among her many honors are the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the Paris Review's Hadada Award, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which she was elected in 2008. She lives in Arizona and Wyoming.