Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

William Kennedy worked as a journalist on newspapers and magazines before he began a career as a novelist. Kennedy's novels, which are all centered around his home city of Albany, New York, include The Ink Truck, Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, Quinn's Book, Very Old Bones, and The Flaming Corsage. Kennedy's celebrated 1983 novel, Ironweed, has won great acclaim over the years, and has earned a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and a PEN-Faulkner Award.

In addition to writing novels, Kennedy co-authored the screenplay for The Cotton Club with Francis Coppola in 1984 and wrote the screenplay for Ironweed in 1987. Kennedy and his son, Brendan, co-authored two children's books, Charlie Malarkey and the Belly Button Machine and Charlie Malarkey and the Singing Moose.

William Kennedy is the founder and director of the New York State Writers Institute, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a onetime editor of the San Juan Star and a former writing teacher at Cornell University. He is now a professor in the English department of the University at Albany.

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