William Kennedy was born and raised in Albany, New York. His Albany Cycle of novels includes Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, Ironweed, Quinn’s Book, Very Old Bones, The Flaming Corsage, and Roscoe. A journalist before becoming a novelist, Mr. Kennedy covered the civil rights movement and Cuban revolutions in the 1950s and 1960s. He is a MacArthur Fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Averil Park, New York.