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Gregory D. Williams, author of A Dry Heat: Collected Stories, captures turning points in the lives of boys and men. Two stories in the collection draw on the author’s memories of a boyhood spent playing Little League and slip-sliding on irrigated grass of Phoenix, Arizona’s city parks. Stories about fatherhood and middle-aged men had their origins in the author’s medical practice. Other stories sprang from his writer’s notebook, always at hand, whether he was standing at the counter of a coffee shop or tagging along with writing friends bound for an Arizona greyhound park.
A late-life writer who began writing after his father’s unexpected death, Gregory D. Williams grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He graduated from Stanford University and went to medical school at the University of Arizona. Prior to taking an early retirement, Gregory D. Williams worked as an MD with a specialty in anesthesiology.
Dr. Williams was the winner of Georgia College’s prestigious Arts & Letters fiction prize. His fiction, essays, and poetry appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Elysian Fields, American Fiction, Bosque, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. His poignant novel, Open Heart, is about a young man shadowing famous heart surgeons, all the while trying to heal his own broken heart. As the blurb for the novel explains, “Life is fleeting. Love is a gift.”
What Medicine and Writing Have in Common
When it comes to understanding what makes us tick, medical doctors have a unique vantage point. Often when we visit their offices, the doctor steps into the examining room and subtly takes our measure. There are lab results. Additional tests. Casting a supposedly rational and objective eye on their patients, doctors glimpse our confusion and despair. Then the roadmap unfolds. The fork to the left leads to what we fear. The road to the right leads to recovery and a second chance. With life and death on the line, a doctor’s powers of observation must be quick, scalpel-sharp, and intuitive. The same is true for the short story. We’re in and out, one and done.
A story is compact. The events in the story take place in a day, an hour, or mere minutes. And, like a visit to the doctor’s office, the short stories in A Dry Heat draw on the author’s medical training and keen powers of observation. Such is the territory of the short story—intuitive, brief, and emotionally precise.
How does a short story differ from a novel? A story gives us a glimpse of life, but not the whole life. A story reveals a character at a moment of vulnerability. A story is a snapshot. When the doctor leaves the room, the patient puts on his or her clothes. Life resumes. Perhaps the patient is changed by what she or he has learned in that brief encounter, or perhaps not. And as for the doctor, perhaps the doctor is changed, too.
Click on the story title to download and read “Playing Doctor,” one of the stories in A Dry Heat. Enter the world of a medical student giving a breast exam to a female colleague. If you are tempted to read further, here are buy links to some of your favorite online bookstores. The hardback edition would make a great gift.
