Struggling architect Ethan Cotham understands Ben Jonson’s observation, “Art hath an enemy called Ignorance.” Cotham may have just won a prestigious competition to design the new Center for Southern Culture on the banks of the Mississippi River, but now his unconventional ideas must survive attack by the conservative Memphis Board of Design Review. Written with a solid ring of authenticity, the story builds to a suspenseful and tragic climax amidst its setting in Memphis and Mississippi, a region peopled by colorful characters where the past is inevitably in conflict with the present.
James Williamson, author of The Ravine and The Architect, is a professor of architecture at the University of Memphis. After some 30 years of professional practice in his own firm, he now teaches full-time at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Prof. Williamson has received over 30 architectural design awards at the local, regional, and national levels, and his work has been published internationally. In 2005 he was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in recognition of his notable contributions in architectural design and education.
He was born in Memphis, and is a graduate of Rhodes College. As a student he participated in the Civil Rights movement, marching with Dr. Martin Luther King during the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike. During the Vietnam War he served as a naval officer.
Following his military service Prof. Williamson obtained two Master of Architecture degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a student of renowned architect Louis Kahn. In Philadelphia he also worked as an associate of Robert Venturi. Major commissions by his own firm in Memphis included a number of new churches, the restoration of two historic cathedrals and a theater, the headquarters of the city’s ballet company, a law office, and collaboration on a plan for downtown Memphis.
His first novel, The Architect, was praised by a reviewer as “a thoughtful, moving novel about the realities of building, particularly when style collides with money, politics, and the demands of the less than enlightened… a lively treatise on architecture itself.” A previous book, The Central Gardens Handbook, is a guide to historic preservation for a local historic district, now in its second edition. In addition, he has had a number of articles published in national and international architectural journals, as well as a cover article for “Tennessee Historical Quarterly” magazine. The Ravine (2012) is his latest novel. Prof. Williamson is currently at work on a non-fiction book about Louis Kahn.
