William Weaks Morris (November 29, 1934 – August 2, 1999) was an American writer and editor born in Jackson, Mississippi and raised in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Morris had a lyrical prose style which he lent to reflections on the American South, including Yazoo City and the Mississippi Delta. From 1967 to 1971 he was the editor of Harper's Magazine. He published more than 20 titles, works of both fiction and nonfiction, the best known of which are North Toward Home and My Dog Skip.

Morris's parents moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi when he was six months old. Yazoo City figures prominently in much of Morris's writing. After graduating as valedictorian of his Yazoo City High School class, Morris attended the University of Texas at Austin. He became a member of Delta Tau Delta international fraternity, where a room is named after him in the chapter house.

In his senior year Morris was elected editor of the university's student newspaper, The Daily Texan. His editorials against segregation, censorship and collusion between state officials and oil and gas interests earned him the enmity of university administrators, particularly from the university's Board of Regents. As an example of the animosity, Morris wrote in North Toward Home that the university did not acknowledge his award of a Rhodes Scholarship with even as much as a letter of congratulation. Although Morris's contribution to the university continues to go unrecognized, in 1997 The Daily Texan began honoring each year's best editorial writer with "The Willie Morris Award for Editorial Excellence."

Morris graduated in 1956 and began studying history at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. While at Oxford, Morris played for the Oxford University men's basketball team. In 1958 he married Celia Buchan of Houston, and in 1959 they had a son, David Rae. The next year they returned to the United States, where Morris became the editor of The Texas Observer, a liberal bi-weekly newspaper.

The marriage lasted 10 years, and Celia Morris writes about Willie and their divorce in her fourth book, Finding Celia's Place.

In 1963, Morris joined the staff of Harper's Magazine, in New York City, as associate editor, and in 1967 he was named editor-in-chief. In the same year he published North Toward Home, which became a bestseller and earned the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award for non-fiction.

North Toward Home is an autobiographical account of his childhood in Yazoo City, Mississippi; early adulthood in Austin, Texas; and eventual move from the South to New York City. Critics cited the tender reflections on Southern smalltown culture, and the tone of those alienated expatriate Southerners who move north, but retain nostalgia for the South they left behind.

As the youngest-ever editor-in-chief of an influential literary magazine, Morris helped to launch the careers of notable writers such as William Styron and Norman Mailer. But the Cowles family, owners of Harper's Magazine, was perplexed by the content Morris published: longer articles of overtly liberal sentiment that offended cautious advertisers. Amidst falling ad sales, the Cowles family expressed their dissatisfaction with Morris until he resigned under pressure in 1971.