Mary Esma Williams, who went by May, was born in January 1882 in Holden, Missouri. When she was 7 years old, the Williams family moved to Osawatomie, Miami County, Kansas, May's mother's home town. After graduating from Osawatomie High School in 1898, May Williams earned a degree in mathematics from the University of Kansas in 1905. She married Merle Ward, who worked in the grain elevator business, in 1908.

Merle and May Ward moved where Merle's business took them, including towns in both Colorado and Kansas. When the Great Depression adversely affected Merle's business, they moved to Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas, where the Ward family owned a hotel. Merle and May Ward remained in Wellington the rest of their lives.

Ward began publishing poems in the 1920s, her works appearing in national magazines that included Life, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and others, as well as in newspapers that included the New York Sun and Kansas City Star. In 1925 she was invited to spend a month at the MacDowell writing colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and in 1926 she became editor of The Harp, a national poetry magazine published out of Larned, Kansas. Ward began creating wood block prints to accompany her poems. She was also involved in KFKU's "Women of Kansas" radio series that ran in 1947.

Ward published several books of poetry, including Seesaw (1929), Double Rhythm (self-published in 1929), and In That Day (1969). She won several awards for her works, including two from the Poetry Society of America.

May Williams Ward died in 1975.

[Information retrieved from "May Williams Ward," Map of Kansas Literature, accessed 28 May 2020, https://washburn.edu/reference/cks/mapping/ward/#:~:text=May%20Williams%20Ward%2C%20Kansas%20Poet,Wellington%2C%20Map%20of%20Kansas%20Literature&text=Mary%20Esma%20Williams%2C%20always%20called,the%20expanding%20Missouri%20Pacific%20Railroad.]