Department of English

Lois Williams

Lecturer in English

Phone: 412-624-6562

lmwst35@pitt.edu
lois4williams@gmail.com

CL 617-T

Fax: 412-624-6639

Lois Williams teaches poetry, reading, and writing in the Department's undergraduate curriculum.  She writes about landscape, family, and migration and is currently at work on a nonfiction book about the invention of home.  Her essay “The House of Provisions” appears in the October 2008 issue of Granta.

Honors and Awards: Williams’ poems and nonfiction have earned her two full fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, a Barbara Deming Memorial Award for women writers, and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts individual artist fellowship.  In 2006/7 she was Charles Pick Fellow in Writing at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. 

Recent Publications

  • “A Bidding,” “At Dodd’s Hill,” and “In England Again After Years Away,” Cave Wall, Issue 6. 2009.
    http://www.cavewallpress.com/poem6_2.htm
  • “The House of Provisions,” Granta, Issue 103.  2008.
  • “Slowly, Westward,” commissioned by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh Writers in the Gardens reading series and forthcoming in a chapbook by the same organization. 2008
  • “Good Weather,” commissioned by Silver Eye Center for Photography, 2008
  • Review of Velocity, Western Pennsylvania History Magazine, 2008
  • “Girl, Water, Light,” Fourth River: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 2006
  • “Jimmy Santiago Baca” and “Lucille Clifton” biographical introductions, The Oxford Anthology of Working Class Literature, 2006
  • “Sign at Main Street, Johnson VT,”  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12/24/2005
  • “Remembered Reader,”  READER: Essays in Reader-oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy.  Issue 50, 2004

Teaching

  • Poetry
    • Introduction to Poetry Writing
    • Reading Poetry
    • Poetry: Form and Argument
    • Seminar in Composition: Responding to Poetry
  • Composition:
    • Intensive Workshop in Composition
    • Workshop in Composition
    • Seminar in Composition
    • Narratives of the Workplace
    • Topics in Composition: Form, Grammar, and the Shapely Sentence
  • Literature
    • Introduction to Shakespeare
    • The Immigrant Experience
    • Working Class Literature
    • Reading Poetry
  • Writing
    • Introduction to Creative Writing
    • Introduction to Poetry
    • Autobiography and Creative Impulse

University Service

  • Member, Composition Curriculum Committee
  • Member, Class Visits Committee
  • Member, Manuscript Committee
  • Fellow, Western Pennsylvania Writing Project
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