Landfalls by Naomi Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). Inspired by a map she purchased, Naomi Williams, a 2010 graduate of the College of Letters and Science masters in creative writing program, recreates an actual doomed 18th Century attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Each chapter is told from a different point of view and set in a different part of the world. It is the Davis resident’s first novel.

Naomi J. Williams was born in Japan and spoke no English until she was six years old. Her debut novel, Landfalls, a fictionalized account of the 18th-century Lapérouse expedition, came out with Farrar, Straus & Giroux in August of 2015. Naomi’s short fiction has appeared in journals such as A Public Space, One Story, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review. In 2009, she received a Pushcart Prize and a Best American Honorable Mention. Naomi has an MA in Creative Writing from UC Davis.

Naomi lives with her family in Davis, California, where she’s started work on her second book, a novel about the early 20th-century Japanese poet Yosano Akiko.

View the book at Macmillan Publishers