Born in New York City, Williams received her BA and MA from New York University, where she studied journalism and English. In 2001, Williams received a New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and returned to Warren Wilson’s low-residency MFA program. In 2004, she won the Prairie Schooner Book Award for Poetry for her book, Adonis Garage. Poet Mark Doty said of Adonis Garage, “You couldn't ask for a more articulate ars poetica. Williams beats out of difficulty and gorgeousness her own lyrics of pleasure and fury, in poems that sing and lament a fierce urban matrix, where there’s ‘Mary-rage in the off-duty taxicabs, but God bless/ the satin of born-again swagger.’ Assured and vulnerable, passionate and undeceived, Adonis Garage is a thrilling debut.” She taught English at Bloomfield College in Bloomfield New Jersey. In July of 2009, Williams died in Brooklyn, New York at the age of 47.