Tennessee Williams Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. As a child, he lived with his mother and grandfather. When he was fourteen, Williams too first place in an essay contest sponsored by a national magazine, The Smart Set. At the age of seventeen, his first published story appeared in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales. A year later Williams entered the University of Missouri but in 1932 he withdrew and took a job at the shoe factory where his father held a job as a sales manager. In 1935 Williams returned to college and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938. Williams had begun writing plays while attending th