Amanda Kyle Williams

Biography

Williiams was born in Norfolk, Virginia and spent her childhood between Colorado and Georgia. She remained in Georgia as an adult, making Decatur, Georgia her home. She identifies closely as a Southerner. Atlanta and its surrounding environs serve as the primary setting for her Keye Street series.

The Keye Street series features Chinese-American, recovering alcoholic Keye Street who owns a private investigative firm in Atlanta. In creating the character, Williams drew on her experience working in disparate occupations such as house painter, commercial embroiderer, owner of a dog walking service, and process server. She enhanced her knowledge of surveillance by working with an Atlanta-based private investigative firm.

The Keye Street character was inspired by Williams' Chinese niece, who, like Keye Street, has white southern parents. “I have the distinction of looking like what they still call a damn foreigner in most parts of Georgia, and sounding like a hick everywhere else in the world.” Keye Street-The Stranger You Seek (Bantam 2011)

Not unlike the author, Keye Street has deep affection for the South. "You learn to forgive (the South) for its narrow mind and growing pains because it has a huge heart. You forgive the stifling summers because the spring is lush and pastel sprinkled, because winter is merciful and brief, because corn bread and sweet tea and fried chicken are every bit as vital to a Sunday as getting dressed up for church, and because any southerner worth their salt says please and thank you. It's soft air and summer vines, pine woods and fat homegrown tomatoes. It's pulling the fruit right off a peach tree and letting the juice run down your chin. It's a closeted and profound appreciation for our neighbors in Alabama who bear the brunt of the Bubba jokes. The South gets in your blood and nose and skin bone-deep. I am less a part of the South than it is part of me. It's a romantic notion, being overcome by geography. But we are all a little starry-eyed down here. We're Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara and Rosa Parks all at once.” The Stranger You Seek (Bantam 2011)

Work

Both The Stranger You Seek and The Stranger in the Room have appeared on annual best-of lists. Publishers Weekly called The Stranger You Seek "an explosive, unpredictable, and psychologically complex thriller that turns crime fiction clichés inside out." As of July 2014 her novels have been translated into nine languages.

Awards