Kay Williams

Kay Williams is an award-winning author, actress, and screenwriter whose work blends suspense, emotional depth, and a distinctly cinematic edge. A longtime member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Actors Equity Association, and the Women's National Book Association, she draws on a rich creative career both onstage in front of the camera and behind it.

A trip to Leningrad in 1991--when the city felt charged with danger and possibility--inspired The Matryoshka Murders, written with her collaborator Eileen "Jo" Wyman. The novel was a finalist for both the USA Best Book and the Montaigne Medal.

Their partnership also produced the gritty Hell's Kitchen thriller Butcher of Dreams, set in the Off-Broadway world of 42nd Street. It earned the Reader Views Literary Award for Best Mystery/Thriller/Suspense., Book of the Year honors, and multiple screenplay accolades, including recognition from the Big Apple Screenplay & Film Competition, Filmmatic Drama Awards, the NY Metropolitan Screenplay Competition, the Tokyo Screenplay Awards, and the Cannes World film Festival.

Kay is co-author of the comic romance One Last Dance: It's Never Too Late to Fall in Love, completed with her sister Jerri Lawrence from their journalist father Mardo Williams's final manuscript. It won the Ohioana Award and the IPPY for Best Regional Fiction.

As an actress, Williams has performed leading roles in Hamlet, As You Like It, The Glass Menagerie, Elizabeth the Queen, The Little Foxes, and numerous Off-Broadway premieres. Her production credits include City Women (Cannes) and Revolution (Leningrad Documentary Festival). She has edited more than sixty published books and served as Associate Editor for The Medical Interview (Springer-Verlag NY).

Shadows of Leningrad (2026) continues the story begun in The Matryoshka Murders and is dedicated to her partner in crime, Eileen “Jo” Wyman (1930-2013).