The author, in a nutshell…

Nancy Williams is a 1990 graduate of Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, where she received a BA in English. Hawkmoon was her senior project. After graduation, she tabled her writing career and moved out west to Leadville, Colorado. There, she worked seasonally for the U.S. Forest Service as a Forestry Tech, which involved doing a little bit of everything, from trail maintenance to law enforcement to fire fighting. It was without question the most rewarding time of her life.

After five years she returned to Meadville. Her mother, Twyla Williams, had passed away in 1995, and her father, Henry Williams, passed away in November 1997, three months after she returned to Pennsylvania. She assumed control of the family farm shortly thereafter.

Nancy began writing her second novel, Grace, in 1998. After completing it in the fall of 2006, she began submitting it to agents and publishers, with little success. In the fall of 2007, she submitted it to the Paul Gillette Fiction Contest, which is part of the Pikes Peak Writer’s Conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Though Grace failed to place, it did receive high marks, and Nancy learned a great deal from the feedback and the conference, which she attended in April, 2008. In the meantime, she had dusted off Hawkmoon, knowing a shorter novel has a better chance of success, and sure enough, right before she left for the Springs, she received a request for the full manuscript from Loon In Balloon, Inc. (LIB, Inc.), a small Canadian press in Ontario. Six months later, they offered her a contract.

After many rewrites and much tinkering, Nancy resubmitted Grace to the Pikes Peak Fiction Contest, and sure enough, perseverance paid off. She took first prize in the Historical Fiction category. Right around that same time, LIB, Inc. informed her that they sold the option agreement for the film rights to Hawkmoon to a Canadian film company.

Nancy lives in Meadville, PA with her husband David.