Her Brazilian mother worked part-time as a hairdresser and her Welsh father was a computer analyst, who also wrote children's books and jokes, and was a feminist.
[1] She attended Mackellar Girls' High School and grew up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney.
She studied science, psychology, and sociology at the Mitchell College of Advanced Education in Bathurst (now Charles Sturt University).
It was published in March 2020,[1] and was sixth on the list of Australian fiction bestsellers in the year of publication.
[5] It was well-reviewed,[6][7] sold well,[8] and won several awards, including General Fiction Book of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards[9] and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction[10] A stage adaptation followed, and a TV series is being made of the novel.
[1] Also set in Oxford, during the First World War, the story centres on two sisters who work at a book bindery.
They moved from Sydney to a hobby farm in the Adelaide Hills in 2003, but found after some years (while Williams was working in the city) that they were "hopeless at it".