Philip Lee Williams (born January 30, 1950) is an American novelist, poet, and essayist noted for his explorations of the natural world, intense human relationships, and aging.

He is the winner of many literary awards for his 21 published books, including the 2004 Michael Shaara Prize for his novel A Distant Flame (St. Martin’s), an examination of southerners who were against the Confederacy’s position in the American Civil War.

He is also a winner of the Townsend Prize for Fiction for his novel The Heart of a Distant Forest, and has been named Georgia Author of the Year four times.

Williams's The Divine Comics: A Vaudeville Show in Three Acts, a 1000-page re-imagining of Dante's magnum opus, was published in the fall of 2011.

1948), moved to Madison, Georgia, in 1953, where Marshall Williams had accepted a job as a chemistry teacher at Morgan County High School.

His first novel, The Heart of a Distant Forest (W.W. Norton, 1984) is the story of a retired junior college history professor who has returned to his home place on a pond in north central Georgia to spend the last year of his life.

[citation needed] Williams’s second novel, All the Western Stars (Peachtree Publishers, 1988) is the story of two old men who run away from a rest home to become cowboys on a ranch in Texas.

[citation needed] Subsequent novels include: Slow Dance in Autumn was translated into Japanese, and Final Heat into German and French.

[citation needed] A composer, Williams has to his credit 18 symphonies, chamber works, concerti, and much incidental and church music.