Major works:
Ironweed • Legs • Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game
William Kennedy is an American writer and journalist born and raised in Albany, New York. Returning to Albany in 1963 after stints in the US Army and newspaper work in Puerto Rico, Kennedy established himself as a leading investigative journalist at the Times Union and received a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1965 for a series on urban poverty. He published his first novel, The Ink Truck, in 1969, followed by Legs (1975), Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game (1978), and Ironweed (1983), which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. These works form the core of Kennedy’s eight-novel Albany Cycle. In addition to his fiction, Kennedy has written nonfiction, criticism, plays, screenplays, and books for children. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1983, which enabled him to found the New York State Writers Institute, where he serves as executive director. Kennedy has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received numerous honors, including the Eugene O’Neill Lifetime Achievement Award and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award. The ninth novel in the Albany Cycle remains a work in progress.
“Florence had Dante, Dublin had James Joyce—so Albany, New York, has the celebrated author William Kennedy . . . as its literary voice.” – LA Review of Books
“Towns get labelled: William Kennedy . . . has at last persuaded the literary world of New York City that Albany is not merely a stodgy block of municipal offices but also a wild Irish town.” – London Review of Books
Books
