Papers of Sherley Anne Williams, distinguished novelist, poet, playwright, and professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, where she taught creative writing and African-American literature.

Williams was born in Bakersfield, California in 1944. The daughter of migrant farm workers, her family picked cotton and fruit in the San Joaquin Valley. When she was eight years old, her father died of tuberculosis and left the family destitute. While attending high school at Thomas Alva Edison High in Fresno, Williams realized she had a passion for language and writing. She graduated in 1962 and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English at California State University, Fresno in 1966. She later attended Fisk and Howard Universities, and was accepted at Brown University where she received her Master's degree in American Literature in 1972.

6.8 Linear feet (17 archives boxes and 1 oversize folder)

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