Sherley Anne Williams

Sherley Anne Williams died of cancer in July 1999 at the age of 54.

Williams has written two picture books, Working Cotton (1992), which won the Caldecott Award of the American Library Association and a Coretta Scott King book award, and Girls Together (1997). For television, Williams wrote the programs, Ours to Make (1973), and The Sherley Williams Special (1977). Williams published the groundbreaking critical study of African American writing Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study of Neo-Black Literature in 1972. She was also selected to write the introduction for Zora Neale Hurston’s 1991 edition of Their Eyes Were Watching God.

In the early 1990s Williams reconnected with Bertram Turetzky for some recording sessions for his album Compositions And Improvisations, which also featured various jazz and blues artists including Vinny Golia, Jerome Rothenberg, Quincy Troupe, and Nancy Turetzky. Williams is credited as a vocalist for her contributions to Turetzky's album. Three of the songs featured on the album were previously-written poems by Williams recorded in musical format: "One-Sided Bed Blues", "Big Red And His Brother", and "The Wishon Line". The album was recorded at Studio 101 in Solana Beach, California during the summer of 1992, and released by Nine Winds Records in 1993.

Williams is also known for her music, which mainly consisted of blues and jazz poetry. In 1982 Williams wrote, recorded, and self-published her debut single titled "Some One Sweet Angel Chile", which was re-released by Blues Economique Records in 1984. The music for "Some One Sweet Angel Chile" was composed by Bertram Turetzky.

Williams published two collections of poetry: The Peacock Poems (1975), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and "Some One Sweet Angel Chile (1982), also nominated for a National Book Award. She won an Emmy Award for her television performance of poems from this collection. Her novel Dessa Rose (1986) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, received two laudatory reviews in the New York Times in 1986, was translated into several languages, and was adapted into a musical that premiered in 2005. Williams' one-woman play, Letters from a New England Negro (1992) was performed at the National Black Theater Festival in 1991 and at the Chicago International Theater Festival in 1992.

Sherley Anne Williams was born in Bakersfield, California to Lena Leila Marie Siler and Jessee Winston Williams, who were migrant farm workers. She was raised in the projects on the east side of Bakersfield and picked cotton and fruit with her parents and three sisters in the fields and orchards of Fresno. Williams was eight when her father died of tuberculosis and was 16 years old when her mother died from a heart attack. Williams graduated from Thomas Alva Edison High School in Fresno, California, in 1962. In 1966 she earned her bachelor's degree in English at what is now California State University, Fresno and she received her master's degree at Brown University in 1972. The following year (1973) Williams became a professor of African-American Literature at the University of California at San Diego. Over the course of her career at UCSD, Williams served as chair of the literature department from 1977 to 1980, traveled to Ghana as a senior Fulbright scholar in 1984, and a served as a visiting professor at USC, Stanford, and Sweet Briar College. In 1987, Williams was the Distinguished Professor of the Year by the UCSD Alumni Association. In 1998, Williams was awarded the African American Literature and Culture Society’s Stephen Henderson Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature and Poetry.

Sherley Anne Williams was born on August 25, 1944 in Bakersfield, California, USA.