Life Like Weeds

When he was a child, William Kennedy was secretly dreaming of one day becoming a Catholic priest. But life decided otherwise. Today he is known for being an American novelist and journalist. He was born in Albany (New-York) on January 16th, 1928.

He first started his career as a journalist working for the Post Star as a sports reporter, and then worked for an army newspaper in Europe. When he came back in the United States, he worked four years at the Albany Times-Union, then he worked for the Miami Herald. In 1957 he went to Puerto Rico and was named the first managing editor of a news paper, the San Juan Star.

This is where he met and married Ana Daisy Segarra, a dancer, singer and actress with whom he had three children : Dana, Katherine and Brendan.

In San Juan, Kennedy met novelist Saul Bellow, and enrolled in a creative writing class taught by Bellow himself, at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras. Bellow was impressed with Kennedy’s early attempts at fiction and encouraged him to continue developing his talent.

Kennedy found it very difficult to find inspiration in Puerto Rico, and was afraid to sound like a tourist if he was writing about the island. So, after two years working for the Puerto Rico World Journal, he decided to move back to his native Albany, quit journalism altogether, and concentrated on his creative writing.

In 1963, when he returned to Albany, he wrote a series of articles about the city, that earned him a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. These articles became the basis for a non-fiction book “O Albany !”.

In 1969, Kennedy realized a dream when his first novel “The Ink Truck” was published. It was a very promising novel. But for his next work, he decided to turn to Albany history for inspiration. “Legs” was written in 1975, and told the story of the final days of gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond, who died in a shootout with his enemies in an Albany boarding house in 1931.

William Kennedy wrote a large selection of books, fictions, non fictions, screenplays and even children’s books. And in May 2002, among other prizes, he was elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences.