[2] Williams attended Wellington Girls' College,[3] and, in 1966, moved to Dunedin to study an arts degree in English literature at the University of Otago,[4] where her father was appointed vice-chancellor the following year.

[4][5][6] In 1981 Williams left OUP to start her own independent company, Port Nicholson Press,[5] which she founded with Roy Parsons and Lindsey Missen.

[4] Two of her major projects while at Allen & Unwin went on to win the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Award: the multi-volume Dictionary of New Zealand Biography;[4] and Claudia Orange's The Treaty of Waitangi.

[9] In 2010, Encircled Lands: Te Urewera 1820–1921 won the NZ Post Book of the Year Award.

[3] In the 1996 New Year Honours, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to book publishing,[12] and in the 2012 Queen's Birthday and Diamond Jubilee Honours she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to publishing.