F.J.Williams was born in Liverpool in 1951 and studied English at Durham, with postgraduate work at Manchester and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. He has followed the profession of teaching and worked in schools, colleges and a prison where he taught adult literacy. The experience was the stimulus for his first collection Reading Lesson in the Lifers’ Wing (Peterloo, 2009).

He has also been Director of the Bridge Arts centre in Widnes and held a NATE teaching fellowship at the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He lectured in English at University College Chester and contributed his research on Algesiras Greimas and Bronislaw Malinowski to the Key Thinkers in Linguistics and Philosophy and Language (Edinburgh University Press).

He has won prizes in national competitions and been broadcast on radio and television. The Model Shop derives from his experience of living in the urban environment of the North West of England where he works as a writer and reviewer.