Poet
Christie Max Williams’ debut poetry collection, The Wages of Love, won the 2022 William Meredith Poetry Prize. He is also a writer and actor. Though originally from California and then New York City, he now lives in Mystic, Connecticut, where he and his wife raised their daughter and son. He has worked as an actor and director in California, New York, and Connecticut. He also worked as a fruit vendor in Paris, a salmon fisherman in Alaska, a consultant on Wall Street, a writer for the National Audubon Society, and in leadership posts for non-profit organizations in whose causes he believes. He co-founded and for many years directed The Arts Café Mystic, which is in its 28th year of presenting programs featuring readings by America’s best poets, complemented by music of New England’s finest musicians. His poetry has been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies, and has won the Grolier Prize, placed second in the Connecticut River Review Contest, and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and Morton Marr Prize.
View Christie Max Williams in a reading of his poetry at The Arts Café Mystic, which took place on November 18, 2022.
Williams Meredith Poetry Award Citation
“Christie Max Williams is a well-known Connecticut actor, poet, and impresario. The exquisite poems in his first collection (published soon in 2022 by Antrim House,) recount his love of women, children, and fatherhood. A lifetime as a footsoldier in the arts has prepared him for the mastery of language and the charming appreciation of the “good bind” he finds himself in at the joyful human moment demonstrated in his poems. They fulfill the highest potential of poetry: to teach, yes, but importantly, to delight. To paraphrase Saint Paul, the wages of love is life.”