Randall Williams is the editor-in-chief of NewSouth Books, which he co-founded with publisher Suzanne La Rosa in 2000. He is responsible for the acquisitions, editorial, and production parts of NewSouth’s publishing program. Since publishing his first book in 1989, he has published or co-published more than 500 titles, more than any other trade book publisher in Alabama history. Though he now reads mostly manuscripts and galleys, he has always loved books. Two of his favorites: The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens and Lonesome Dove. Before publishing books, he was a reporter, editor, and publisher for newspapers and magazines, and he worked a decade at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where he was the founding director of the Klanwatch Project.
Read the 90-Second Autobiography of Horace Randall Williams.
See the 60 Minutes segment about the Huck Finn N-word controversy in which Randall is among the people interviewed. Read more about the controversy, which began with NewSouth’s 2011 publication of of Mark Twain?s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The NewSouth Edition.
Watch Randall Williams interviewed on Alabama Public Television’s Face to Face from August 24, 2008.
Watch the documentary Another Voice (33:22), about Randall Williams and the other student journalists on the Samford Crimson at Samford University in 1973 as they battled for student press freedom.