Rita Williams came of age in the cold and rugged mountain terrain of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. By the age of four, her father had left the family and her mother had died, leaving Rita to be raised and cared for by her aunt Daisy, the last surviving African American widow of a Civil War union soldier.

Her previous work has appeared in Best Food Writing for 2007, The Los Angeles Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, O at Home, Saveur, The Utne Reader, Transitions – a Journal of Post Colonial Peoples, the LA Weekly.  Her short stories have also been published in numerous anthologies.  Rita is currently teaching at the University of Southern California in their Master of Professional Writing Program. She received her MFA in from the California Institute of the Arts and lives in Los Angeles. Published by Harcourt in 2007, If the Creek Don’t Rise is her first book.