Please welcome Michigan author Julie Bonner Williams to What, Why, How!
What:
Writing through several decades, I’ve had been fortunate to have opportunities to write in oh-so-many genres. I was first published in Seventeen magazine, selling a poem I wrote at seventeen years old, called “Generations.” I sold four more poems to Seventeen, three of which were published by the time I was nineteen. Poetry is kind of home plate for me. I admit to having many loves, however, and love writing essays and non-fiction works. I’m fascinated by people’s stories, so memoir is a favorite genre.
My first book, Houses in Grand Rapids- Living with the Dead, was recently purchased by Arcadia Publishing. It is a wonderful hybrid of memoir and non-fiction, hearing and writing about people’s experiences living in houses with paranormal activity.
My essays and feature articles have appeared in Michigan BLUE magazine, and I recently won an honorable mention for my essay, “What Lies Behind Us, What Lies Before Us,” in the 2025 Springfed Writers contest. Fiction is fun, but I seem to have more opportunity to write books, essays, articles, and poems. In that time in my life known as “back in the day” (i.e. college years), I was downright giddy when my Creative Writing Professor -who wrote Hollywood screenplays- used my story, “Phoenix Rising” as an example of how to write short fiction Creative Writing in his ongoing classes. I haven’t ventured into screenplay or stage play writing –yet!
Why:
I think writing is just stamped on my DNA. I wrote my first short story when I was five years old. I couldn’t actually write (as in form letters and words) yet, but I wrote what I could, read those few words, then just told the story out loud.
Throughout eighth grade I had to look both ways before stepping out the door to walk home at the end of the day. It was a matter of getting out alive. My eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Edlund, used to assign short stories or poems as homework. Sometimes she’d mention at the start of class that we’d have a story to write over the weekend, and if she forgot by the end of the hour, I’d raise my hand and offer a reminder: “Mrs. Edlund, don’t forget our homework assignment!” I learned to duck fast in that class – it was that or be pelted with paper wads when Mrs. Edlund turned her back.
Today I find writing is the sort of escape offered by an engrossing book or by sleep. I can sit down at my laptop to write, and there’s this threshold between being in “now” that I subconsciously transcend and am in this place beyond myself and my surroundings as I write.
How:
Writing is such a natural outpouring of me-ness, I’ve overcome a couple of obstacles that are an organic part of being me. I work with my tap-dancing brain (I think the technical term is ADD?) by writing on my laptop. The words feel like they rush from my mind so quickly, I need to be able to get them down quickly. Before the computer years I did more writing by hand and my hand would cramp up. It was like trying to take dictation for someone who outputs words at Mach speed. I sometimes write poems by hand, that process feels natural. I write in the morning until early afternoon, so I have the conversation with my brain, “Okay, it’s morning. You know what we do in the morning.” I also take organic supplements that are supposed to support mental focus.
I have this really wonderful, 1800’s oak desk – it’s huge and is a partner desk, so both sides are designed as a desk front. A big writing space works best for me; cramped space isn’t my writing jam. I sometimes write at our dining table, an antique oak table beside a bank of windows in the back portion of our 1890 farmhouse. It’s summer as I’m sitting at my desk writing this. I’m surrounded by potted plants, an antique wood recipe box filled with notecards on which I’ve written ideas for writing projects, a bottle of water, and my ever-present legal pad and Bic pen. I like a clear writing space, so minimal “stuff.”
Bio:
Julie Bonner Williams is a lifelong lover of words. Immersed in books from her earliest memories, she made good on her answer to every person who asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” She became an English professor, a field that allowed her to revel in books and writing and share her love of both with college students and adults for over 20 years.
Her work has appeared in Seventeen magazine, Michigan BLUE magazine, Grand Rapids magazine, and The Grand Rapids Press, and other publications. She just sold her first book, Haunted Houses in Grand Rapids – Living with the Dead. Julie owns a ridiculous amount of legal pads and Bic pens, grows organic lavender, and listens to Harry Chapin music. She lives on the southwest shores of Lake Michigan with her husband and three dogs.
Links:
Website
Facebook
LinkedIn
X (formerly Twitter)
Thank you for visiting.
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a wrangler of words and big messy feelings in fiction and poetry.
In the Context of Love | Gordy and the Ghost Crab | Sleepwalker
Love and Other Incurable Ailments, coming 10/27/2026 from Regal House Publishing
Connect with Linda on social media: LinkTree