Joan Williams (September 26, 1928 – April 11, 2004) was an American author.
"Rain Later" received the College Fiction Prize from Mademoiselle, and four years later, she published a sequel in the same venue.
These two stories together formed the nucleus of her first novel, "The Morning and the Evening", whose publication led novelist William Styron to call Williams a "greatly gifted writer".
From 1984 to 1994, she lived with Atlantic editor Seymour Lawrence, who had accepted a story of hers in 1952.
[4] Joan Williams's papers reside at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.