Eric Miles Williamson


Eric Miles Williamson is an American novelist and literary critic, member of the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, editor of the American Book Review, Boulevard, and Texas Review. Williamson is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and was previously an associate professor of English at the Central Missouri State University.

''East Bay Grease''

A former student of the fiction writer Donald Barthelme, Williamson has met critical success as a novelist. On his book, East Bay Grease, a journalist at the New York Times wrote, the "prose cuts loose in torrid rhythms that evoke the peril and exuberance of jazz." His style in this book has also led the work to be called "an internal combustion novel."

Personal life

Williamson is a 1979 graduate of Pacific High School in San Leandro, California, and played trumpet in its jazz band. In East Bay Grease, he gives the real names of many of the members of that band, although the novel places them in a fictional junior high school. He lives in McAllen, Texas with his two sons, Guthrie and Turner.

Selected bibliography

Books