Joy Williams

Joy Williams is the author of four novels—including The Quick and the Dead, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001—three collections of stories, and Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Among her many honors are the Rea Award for the short story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Key West, Florida, and Tucson, Arizona.

Fiction – Issue 12

•Traveling to Pridesup

Otilla cooked up the water for her morning tea and opened a carton of ricotta cheese. She ate standing up, dipping cookies in and out of the cheese, walking around the enormous kitchen in tight figure eights as though she…