Ian Williams’s latest book is Word Problems, a poetry collection that considers the ethical and political issues of our time as math and grammar problems. His novel, Reproduction, won of the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize. It was published in Canada, the US, and the UK, and translated into Italian. His poetry collection, Personals, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. His short story collection, Not Anyone’s Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. His first book, You Know Who You Are, was a finalist for the ReLit Poetry Prize. CBC named him as one of ten Canadian writers to watch. He is a trustee for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Williams holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Toronto and is currently a professor of poetry at the University of British Columbia. He was the 2014–2015 Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Writers Program.

The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship was created in 2013 to nurture and sustain a heritage as old as the Library itself: deepening French-American understanding. The Visiting Fellowship offer writers and researchers an opportunity to pursue a creative project in Paris for a month or longer while participating actively in the life of the American Library.

The Visiting Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of The de Groot Foundation.