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William Norris Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

William Norris
Photo: William Norris

William Norris

William Norris Biography

William Norris has taught for Hofstra University, the New School, the College of New Rochelle, and the Gotham Writer’s Workshop in New York City. He has written for Time Out: NY and The Hartford Courant, is the author of Snapshots: A Novel and has published photographs with The Star Ledger, The Associated Press, and Saltwater Sportsman.



This bio was last updated on 09/05/2015. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

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Interview

William Norris talks briefly about the story behind the writing of his first novel, Snapshots.

Before I started Snapshots I had never tried to write a novel. The form seemed daunting, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around its demands or the level of commitment required to see a novel length work through to completion. Instead, I wrote short fiction, much of it, in retrospect, not very good short fiction, and sent my pieces off to journals and magazines without success.

During that time, I wrote four or five stories with the same cast of characters; a family called the Mahoneys. There were four children, and I had written pieces narrated by three of them. I begin to envision a collection of linked stories narrated by each member of the family, but found myself blocked when I attempted to write a story told by Nora, the youngest member of the clan. I sat down each writing day, determined to get Nora’s voice right on the page, but when I read the work over the next morning, it was clear that I wasn’t even close. Everything I tried felt flat and forced.

Then, one morning in the summer of 1997, I typed, "Nora wakes first and toddles to the television hulking silently in the living room." It was the first time I had come at these characters in the third person, and the first time I had written about ...

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Books by this Author

Books by William Norris at BookBrowse
Snapshots jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for William Norris but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Carole Cadwalladr

    Carole Cadwalladr

    Carole Cadwalladr is a British author. Her first novel, The Family Tree, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Author's Club First Novel Award, theWaverton Good Read Award, and the Wales Book of the ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Snapshots

    Try:
    The Family Tree
    by Carole Cadwalladr

  • Jonathan Franzen

    Jonathan Franzen

    Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom, and Purity, and five works of nonfiction, most recently Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth, all published by Farrar, Straus and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Snapshots

    Try:
    The Corrections
    by Jonathan Franzen

We recommend 3 similar authors

View all 3 Read-Alikes

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