"[1][2] Williams was born in Princeton, New Jersey, to a scientist-turned-homemaker mother and a father who was an editorial director at Viking Press.

Williams had a flair for the business but preferred to go into journalism, and in 1986 she got a job as an editor for The Washington Post.

She was also a member of Slate's book club, a group of writers who regularly paired off to conduct online dialogs about recently-published fiction and nonfiction, and contributed occasional book reviews to the Washington Monthly.

Her final Post column, written in November 2004, focused on her young daughter's Halloween costume.

[6] In November 2005 a posthumous collection of Williams's writings, edited by Noah, was published under the title The Woman at the Washington Zoo.