William S. Walker

William Walker is a South Carolina-born writer with a lifelong interest in the state’s Pee Dee region. Walker, from Nichols in Marion County, worked as a reporter and editor in the United States and Europe for more than four decades and has written and edited for newspapers and magazines on assignments in over 50 countries. Dearest Mama, The Lost Letters of a Fallen Soldier and the Stories of Those He Left Behind, was published by the University of South Carolina Press in December 2024. Dearest Mama is Walker’s fourth book since 2014 when he wrote Down The Little Pee Dee, Paddling South Carolina’s Legendary Blackwater River. He began a 28-year career with the newspaper Stars and Stripes at Darmstadt, Germany, as a reporter in 1973 and was the newspaper’s worldwide Executive Editor when he retired in 2002. Before joining Stars and Stripes Walker worked at daily newspapers in South Carolina and as a news editor for the Associated Press. He is a graduate of Clemson University, the University of South Carolina and Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg, Germany, where he earned a Ph.D. in East European History.