Welcome
Ann Joslin Williams is the author of the novels Skyland and Down From Cascom Mountain, and a collection of linked short stories The Woman in the Woods. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, the New Hampshire Writers' Project Literary Awards, and the Stegner Program at Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in many journals including The Sun, Carve, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review and elsewhere. She is an associate professor of English at the University of New Hampshire.
SKYLAND
May 2026 on Islandport Press
Praise for SKYLAND
"An achingly lovely novel about what happens when an act of violence tears apart a family. Skyland shows us that we may be able to find our way back from the unthinkable—slowly and painfully, to be sure, but not without moments of beauty."
—Ann Packer, author of Some Bright Nowhere
"How do we respond when the unthinkable happens? Skyland thrums with provocative questions about obsession, art, loss, and the debts we owe one another—offering a rare and thrilling mix of suspense and sensitivity. Each of the beautifully-drawn characters in this novel has an urgent story to tell, fueled by a desperate desire to make sense of the world. Vividly rooted in its New England setting, Skyland is a page-turner with heart."
—Lewis Robinson, author of The Islanders
"I simply adored Ann Williams' latest, Skyland. Out of one family's devastation and darkness comes a hard won New England light. It doesn't come easy, nothing in this novel comes easy, which is why it is ultimately so rewarding. A book you carry around with you after you've finished because it still provides comfort. You know the sort of book I mean?"
—Peter Orner, author of The Gossip Columnist's Daughter
"In the aftermath of unimaginable horror, Henry Lavender and his two daughters, Nora and Lucy, teeter on the knife-edge of sanity, flirting with dark impulses, as they try to process their new lives. The journey forward is also a journey back, an attempt to understand a shattering moment of violence. Alive to the redemptive beauty of the natural world, which is gloriously described by author Ann Joslin Williams, Skyland is ultimately about observation and correct interpretation. It suggests (and demonstrates) that accurate perception can be a salve, whether one's viewing art, the environment, one's life, or other people's hearts."
—Debra Spark, author of Discipline
And a paperback reissue of
DOWN FROM CASCOM MOUNTAIN
from Islandport Press
Praise for Down From Cascom Mountain
Ann Joslin Williams has crafted a stellar first novel that reads as if it's her tenth. With the finely wrought prose of a poet, Williams gives us flesh and blood characters we can't help but care about, women, men, and children who find themselves deep in dangerous terrain: the natural world of Cascom Mountain, as well as their own conflicted and natural longings. This a haunting and lovely book!
--Andre Dubus, III, author of House of Sand and Fog and Townie.
There seems to be no element of these people and this landscape to which Williams is a stranger. She sees straight to the heart of her characters, and it is a pleasure to witness them yearning and grieving and loving their way through these pages, one living human presence after another, the mountain and the forest rising up around them in all their mystery and specificity.
--Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead and Illumination.
Sexy, following a rugged path from sorrow to salvation, Williams' new book is made from the serious materials of sudden grief -- but it isn't sad In the least. On the contrary! There's a fierce, hard-won joy here, as
sturdy as the mountains of New Hampshire, and as glorious.
--Michael Byers, author of Long For This World and Percival’s Planet
Here in are the qualities of enduring greatness, our turbulent natures, instructions for life. Inside these covers there’s a woman’s profound love, a terrible and beautiful world, the claw of grief. Her story is told with grace and dignity and the kind of writing we hunger for: straight and true, spare and generous.
--Robert Olmsted, author Stay Here With Me and Coal Black Horse
Down From Cascom Mountain is a thrilling and gorgeous novel, one that reaches far beneath the surface of human experience to reveal the roots of love and illuminate the depths of loss. In her virtuosic prose, Williams leads us into a rocky Northern landscape as dangerous as it is seductive; along the way, we come to know her characters as intimately as old friends. Their grief, hope, and desire will follow you far beyond the pages of this unforgettable book, and will lead you to recommend it to everyone you know.
--Julie Orringer, author of How to Breathe Underwater and The Invisible Bridge