William Weaks Morris was born on November 29, 1934, in Jackson, Mississippi; but he spent his boyhood years in Yazoo City. In 1952 he enrolled in the University of Texas. There he became the editor of the Daily Texan and proved himself to be a fearless reporter of the truth (He incurred the wrath of the Board of Regents for segregation and censorship, and the governor of the state for collusion with the 'twin deities'' of oil and gas.) He then became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, majoring in history. In 1963 he became an associate editor at Harpers; and, in 1967 he was promoted to editor-in-chief. His first book, North Toward Home, had just been published.

In July 1999, Willie and his wife JoAnne flew to New York to view a preliminary screening of My Dog Skip. On August 2, back in Yazoo, he died of a heart attack. He was buried in the Yazoo City Glenwood Cemetery (a few yards from the grave site of the 'Witch of Yazoo', a legendary character he immortalized in Good Old Boy).

A list of his writings:

Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood (made into a movie) (1971)
The Last of the Southern Girls (1973)
My Dog Skip ( made into a movie) (1995)
After All, It's Only a Game
Always Stand in Against the Curve, and Other Sports Stories
The Courting of Marcus Dupree (1983)
Good Old Boy and the Witch of Yazoo (1971)
Homecomings (1989)
New York Days (1993)
North Toward Home (1967)
Prayer for the Opening of the Little League Season (1995)
Yazoo:Ê Integration in a Deep Southern Town (1971)
James Jones:Ê A Friendship (1978)
Faulkner's Mississippi
Terrains of the Heart and Other Essays on Home
The Ghosts of Medgar Evers: A Tale of Race, Murder, Mississippi, and Hollywood (also a movie) (1998)
My Cat Spit McGee (1999)
My Mississippi (2000) (Foreword to
Wyatt Waters, Another Coat of Paint: An Artist's View of Jackson, Mississippi
Taps (2001)published posthumously by Joanne Pritchard, Morris's wife).