Williamson, Eric Miles 1961-

PERSONAL:

Born 1961; married; wife's name Judy.

ADDRESSES:

Home—MO.

CAREER:

Writer. American Book Review, editor. Former gunite worker, cement mason, carpet layer, professional trumpet player, mover, asphalt worker, demolitionist, backhoe operator, forklift operator, college professor, jackhammer operator, architectural engineer, gas station attendant, construction foreman, dump truck driver, and longshoreman.

MEMBER:

National Book Critics Circle (member of board).

WRITINGS:

East Bay Grease, Picador USA (New York, NY), 1999.

Two-Up, Texas Review Press (Huntsville, TX), 2006.

Oakland, Jack London, and Me, Texas Review Press (Huntsville, TX), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eric Miles Williamson serves as editor of the American Book Review and is on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. His first book, East Bay Grease, is a coming-of-age novel about T-Bird Murphy, an abused boy growing up in Oakland, California, during a time when the town was filled with biker gangs and drifters. Abandoned by his mother, Murphy ends up with his father, an ex-con, who enrolls him in a new school where he must struggle to avoid the local gang members while trying to maintain his grades and practice the trumpet. John Skow, in a review for Time, called Williamson's debut "a better-than-fair first novel." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised the book on the whole, stating: "T-Bird's bleak life is depicted with stark and candid details, though at times his auxiliary misadventures dissipate the drama his story could yield." Andrea Caron Kempf in the Library Journal wrote that "this unblinking look at the underside of America is imbued with a dignity and sense of humanity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, December 1, 1998, Andrea Caron Kempf, review of East Bay Grease, p. 159.

Publishers Weekly, December 21, 1998, review of East Bay Grease, p. 53.

Time, March 22, 1999, John Skow, review of East Bay Grease, p. 110.

ONLINE

Book Critics Circle Blog,http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/ (June 27, 2007), author interview.

Texas A&M University Press Web site,http://www.tamu.edu/upress/ (June 27, 2007), author biography.