William Kennedy

William Kennedy is a novelist whose writing centers on life in Albany, New York, from colonial times to the present.

He has published seven novels in his Albany Cycle, treating life in Albany during the 19th and 20th centuries. The novels are Legs (1976); Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978); Ironweed (1983), which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and a PEN-Faulkner Award, and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century; Quinn's Book (1988); Very Old Bones (1992); The Flaming Corsage (1996); and Roscoe, a tale of the Albany political machine between the World Wars. Roscoe was a finalist for the PEN-Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle awards. Kennedy's work has been translated into two dozen languages. His first novel was The Ink Truck (1969).

Kennedy co-authored the screenplay for The Cotton Club with Francis Coppola (1984), and wrote the screenplay for Ironweed (1987), directed by Hector Babenco. He wrote an impressionistic history of his city, O Albany! (1983), and published a collection of his journalism and essays, Riding the Yellow Trolley Car, in 1993. His first play, Grand View premiered at the Capital Repertory Theater in Albany in 1996.

Kennedy is founder and executive director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany.

Bibliography:

Roscoe (2002)

The Flaming Corsage (1996)

Riding the Yellow Trolley Car (1993)

Very Old Bones (1992)

Quinn's Book (1988)

Ironweed (1983)

O Albany! (1983)

Billy Phalen's Greatest Game (1978)

Legs (1976)

The Ink Truck (1969)

Links:

University at Albany page
Writers at Cornell interview (.mp3)
NY Times profile (1992)
Review of Ironweed on Littoral