Bennington welcomes back former faculty Phillip B. Williams for reading of his new book ‘Ours”
Last Wednesday the latest Literature Evening Event welcomed back former Bennington Faculty Phillip B. Williams to read from his new book, followed by a Q&A and book signing.
On the Bennington Events webpage Williams is described as “The author of Mutiny, winner of the 2022 American Book Award, and Thief in the Interior, which was the winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a 2017 Lambda Literary award. He is also the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels and Burn. Williams’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and others. He is the recipient of a 2020 creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2017 Whiting Award, and a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. He serves as a faculty member at Randolph College low-residency MFA. His debut novel, Ours (Penguin Random House, 2024), is an epic about the spiritual costs of a freedom that demands fierce protection.”
Before the reading the room was bustling with excitement. The audience was made up of faculty who used to teach with Williams and some previous students. Notably a few students from the class Persona Poetry taught in spring 2022.
Ben Anastas took over Franny Choi’s usual role as host of the evening. He welcomed Williams back to the college and the audience to the reading. He announced the upcoming literature nights and motioned to the table to the right of the podium where books were available for sale after the reading and Q&A.
Anastas’s introduction of Williams was heartfelt and personal since they lived in the same orchard apartment when Williams taught at the school. Since Williams’ is mostly known as a poet and for his poetry Anastas highlighted how exciting it was that Williams was a poet writing a secret novel. This was around 2017.
Speaking of teaching at the school, Anastas described some of the previous classes that Williams taught during his 2017-2022 time at the college. After mentioning Williams’ two collections of poetry Anastas welcomed Williams to the podium with a hug.
Williams thanked Anastas and the rest of the community for the warm welcome and flipped through his book to find a good spot to read from. He joked that there will be spoilers ahead, but so much happens in the book it doesn’t matter.
After the reading there was a Q&A which mostly consisted of questions about what it’s like to write a novel as a poet, to which Williams said he didn’t mean to become a poet, he’s actually always seen himself as just a writer.
When the Q&A finished people swarmed the table to buy their own copies of the beautiful book.
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