FINLEY WILLIAMS is a writer and multimedia artist. Originally hailing from Chicago, she has a perhaps overwrought fondness for people watching, libraries, and city-based literature.
IN EXTENSO is her blog, an online archive of her writing, art projects, and reading lists. Her work explores the intersections of culture, politics, and technology, with tinges of reportage and personal ethnography.
FINLEY WILLIAMS is a writer and multimedia artist. Originally hailing from Chicago, she has a perhaps overwrought fondness for people watching, libraries, and city-based literature.
IN EXTENSO is her blog, an online archive of her writing, art projects, and reading lists. Her work explores the intersections of culture, politics, and technology, with tinges of reportage and personal ethnography.
- As Minnesota Goesby Finley Williams– January 2026 – Five days after George Floyd’s death, I stood in a crowd of protesters, in turn cheering, jeering, and silent. A person dressed in all black reached over from where they stood on a telephone box and grabbed the edge of an American flag strung from the wall of a downtown building.… Read more: As Minnesota Goes
- Chicago Triptych IIby Finley Williams– January 2026 – All the people in the town seemed a little lonely.The children spoke only of fleeing home. – Eve L. Ewing, “Sestina with Matthew Henson’s Fur Suit,” Electric Arches My shoulders sit low under the weight of my bookbag. It’s white with green trim and speckled with flowers. Inside: A collection of… Read more: Chicago Triptych II
- Chicago Triptych IIIby Finley Williams– January 2026 – As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira’s past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners… Read more: Chicago Triptych III
Latest Posts
- As Minnesota Goesby Finley Williams– January 2026 – Five days after George Floyd’s death, I stood in a crowd of protesters, in turn cheering, jeering, and silent. A person dressed in all black reached over from where they stood on a telephone box and grabbed the edge of an American flag strung from the wall of a downtown building.… Read more: As Minnesota Goes
- Chicago Triptych IIby Finley Williams– January 2026 – All the people in the town seemed a little lonely.The children spoke only of fleeing home. – Eve L. Ewing, “Sestina with Matthew Henson’s Fur Suit,” Electric Arches My shoulders sit low under the weight of my bookbag. It’s white with green trim and speckled with flowers. Inside: A collection of… Read more: Chicago Triptych II
- Chicago Triptych IIIby Finley Williams– January 2026 – As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira’s past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners… Read more: Chicago Triptych III
Archive
- Looking Back at Buffaloby Finley Williams– November 2022 – When I committed to living in Buffalo, New York, this past summer, I didn’t think it would be in the wake of a massacre. The Jefferson Avenue Tops on Buffalo’s East Side was attacked on May 14; I arrived in Buffalo on June 4. I was spending my summer there acting… Read more: Looking Back at Buffalo
- Constellationby Finley Williams– December 2024 – I vomited pink clumps as my mother and her friend smoked and laughed, their loud rap music a current beneath, above, around, within the air. Absently, vision wavering and dancing almost sweetly, almost, I noticed the night beyond the window. “Finley,” she said, “Finley.” Not laughing now, her face serious, ugly… Read more: Constellation
- Days at the Janes Placeby Finley Williams– December 2024 – First the place with hardwood floors where my mother would lie in the sunlight. Then the one with the big courtyard full of dead grass and brown staircases like so many spines winding up the back of the building. The graystone with the crumbling balcony outside the window of my brothers’… Read more: Days at the Janes Place
In Extenso 