Merrie Joy Williams

Originally from Manchester, now living in London, Merrie Joy Williams is a poet, novelist, essayist, editor and creative writing tutor. A former teacher, she has been longlisted twice for the National Poetry Competition, shortlisted three times for The Bridport Prize, and is a recent winner of the Poetry Archive’s ‘Wordview’ competition. She is the recipient of a London Writers Award, Arts Council England Awards for poetry and prose, and a Hawthornden fellowship. Residencies have included Manchester Poetry Library, Historic England, and Applause Rural Touring/The South Downs National Park. Poems have been published in Poetry Wales, Pree Lit, Tentacular, The Good Journal, the ‘After Sylvia’ anthology and elsewhere. She is a particular enthusiast of the short story form (some of her own can be found online), and the guitar, which she plays very badly, because she loves to sing.