Niall Williams
| Address: | Co. Clare. |
Niall Williams (born 1958) is an Irish writer of novels, plays, and nonfiction. He is known for his novels Four Letters of Love (1997), As It Is In Heaven (1999), Fall of the Light (2008), History of the Rain (2014), and This Is Happiness (2019). Niall Williams was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1958. His parents' home was not filled with books, but his parents wanted him to be better educated than they were, and his father took him to Pembroke Library every two weeks to encourage reading. Williams attended Oatlands College, a boys' school in Stillorgan, County Dublin, and graduated with a Master's of Arts in Modern American literature from University College Dublin, where he met his future wife, writer Christine Breen. Williams' first published story was printed in The Irish Press when he was 18. He has said that the £25 cheque and nod of approval he received for it were the confirmation he needed from the world to dedicate his life to writing. After a year lecturing at the Université de Caen in Normandy, France, Williams moved to New York City with his wife. He worked briefly at Fox and Sutherland's bookstore in Mount Kisco, New York, before becoming a copywriter at Avon Books. After five years, in 1985, Williams and Breen returned to Ireland and moved to Kilmihil, County Clare, and began co-writing factual accounts of life in rural Ireland.
