Born: 1928, Albany, New YorkLives: Albany, New York
William Kennedy was born in Albany, New York, in 1928 and graduated from Siena College in 1949. He worked as a reporter before turning to fiction.
Many of his novels are set in Albany and feature the Phelan family. They include Legs (1975), Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978), Ironweed (1983) and Quinn's Book (1988). Ironweed won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and he received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1983.