David Wesley Williams

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Angela
1,652 books | 61 friends

Kim Davis
658 books | 43 friends

Corey
4,231 books | 2,950 friends

Barb Wi...
1,696 books | 21 friends

Richard...
716 books | 339 friends

Diana
1,353 books | 352 friends

Clifford
1,569 books | 3,203 friends

John Ra...
752 books | 2,821 friends

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David Wesley Williams

Goodreads Author


Born
Maysville, Ky., The United States
Website

Twitter

Genre

Influences
Faulkner and Welty. Blues and jazz. Bourbon and coffee. Memphis and th ...more

Member Since
October 2011


David Wesley Williams is the author of the novels COME AGAIN NO MORE (available now) and EVERYBODY KNOWS (2023), both from JackLeg Press, and LONG GONE DADDIES (John F. Blair, Publisher, 2013). His short fiction has appeared in the Oxford American, Kenyon Review Online, Akashic Books' MEMPHIS NOIR, Harper Perennial's FORTY STORIES, and such journals as The Common and The Pinch. ...more

New essay: Why Do You Hate Faulkner? (The Branches, Fall 2025)

Ah, Absalom, Absalom! What a wild tangle of a book you are. What a beast and right bastard. A sentence that goes for some 1,300 words—and is incomplete. Conflicting stories about confounding versions of confusing events. Prose so dense it makes the kudzu that covers so much of the author’s Mississippi Hill Country look like a sprig of mint in one of his juleps. (I could use a drink, myself. Two

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Published on January 28, 2026 11:11
Average rating: 3.67 · 263 ratings · 72 reviews · 7 distinct worksSimilar authors
Long Gone Daddies

3.98 avg rating — 81 ratings — published 2013 — 5 editions
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Memphis Noir (Akashic Noir)

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3.54 avg rating — 82 ratings — published 2015 — 5 editions
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Forty Stories

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3.11 avg rating — 87 ratings — published 2012 — 3 editions
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Everybody Knows

4.75 avg rating — 20 ratings3 editions
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Come Again No More

4.83 avg rating — 6 ratings2 editions
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I'll Take You There

liked it 3.00 avg rating — 2 ratings
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Come Again No More

0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings
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More books by David Wesley Williams…
Collected Stories
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Dying Light And O...
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David’s Recent Updates

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Stay Gone Days by Steve Yarbrough
Stay Gone Days
by Steve Yarbrough (Goodreads Author)
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David Williams rated a book it was amazing
Champions For Change by Kyle Veazey
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A Reckoning Up Black Cat Hollow by Matthew F. Jones
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The world is fraught and life is fragile. That’s all the writing prompt Matthew F. Jones seems to need with “A Reckoning up Black Cat Hollow” (Regal House Publishing), a rural noir that is by turns tense, violent, tender, and surreal. It’s a thriller ...more
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The Book of Mischief by Steve Stern
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Edisto by Padgett Powell
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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James   McBride
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Edisto Revisited by Padgett Powell
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Stories from the Attic by William Gay
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The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
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Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
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More of David's books…
“And then we had the wake. It was lovely with tears and laughter, roar and uproar. Nobody died. Well, only a little. We all died a little. But death mostly let us be. Death seemed to think there was, for us, a fate worse than it. Which left us alive in the end, and so very, very drunk.”
David Wesley Williams, Come Again No More (forthcoming 2025)

“Good puzzle would be cross Memphis without passing a barbecue joint.”
David Wesley Williams, Come Again No More (forthcoming 2025)

“The sun played children’s games with the clouds, but the clouds grew tired of such trifling and turned dark.

Two days out of Memphis, a sort of desperation set in aboard the Clementine. Nerves were frayed from the long journey west and patience was as short as the supply of whiskey—a cross look could get you a poke in the eye, a sarcastic remark might prompt a pot shot from one of the cheap pistols that suddenly proliferated on board. Children carried them, even. The snotnoses—armed!”
David Wesley Williams, Everybody Knows (2023)

“He tried the crank radio, a pirate station out of Memphis. Static and guitar scratch, the straggling notes of a song about home.”
David Wesley Williams, Everybody Knows (2023)

“Some nights, we have the road to ourselves and the radio sings only for us. We play our shows and tear-ass out. Tonight, it was this little dive bar in a town we took to calling East Motherless. But we play, no matter. We rock and then we roll. The soundcheck and the fury, the power chord and the glory. Then we load our gear into a muddy-brown Merc with a little trailer behind, and we’re off. Slinging gravel, filling sky with road.”
David Wesley Williams, Long Gone Daddies (2013)

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