Awards & Winners

William Kennedy

Date of Birth 16-January-1928
Place of Birth Albany
(Albany County, United States of America, New York)
Nationality United States of America
Also know as William Joseph Kennedy
Profession Writer, Journalist, Novelist
William Joseph Kennedy is an American writer and journalist born and raised in Albany, New York to William J. Kennedy and to Mary E. McDonald. Kennedy was raised a Catholic. Many of his novels feature the interaction of members of the fictional Irish-American Phelan family, and make use of incidents of Albany's history and the supernatural. Kennedy's works include The Ink Truck, Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, Ironweed, and Roscoe. In 2011, he published Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes, which one reviewer called, a book "written with such brio and encompassing humanity that it may well deserve to be called the best of the bunch." He is a graduate of Siena College in Loudonville, New York and currently resides at Averill Park, a hamlet about 16 miles east of Albany. After serving in the Army, Kennedy lived in Puerto Rico where he met his mentor, Saul Bellow, who encouraged him to write novels. While living in San Juan, he befriended journalist/author Hunter S. Thompson, a friendship that continued throughout their careers. Kennedy, who had been eager to leave Albany, returned to his hometown and worked for the Albany Times Union as an investigative journalist writing stories exposing activities of the O'Connell political machine. His use of Albany as the setting for eight of his novels was described in 2011 by book critic Jonathan Yardley as painting "a portrait of a single city perhaps unique in American fiction."

Awards by William Kennedy

Check all the awards nominated and won by William Kennedy.

2003


Nominations 2003 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Roscoe

2002


New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
Honored for : Roscoe

Nominations 2002 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction Roscoe

1984


American Book Awards
Honored for : O Albany!
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Honored for : Ironweed

Nominations 1984 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Ironweed
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Ironweed