Charles Alfonso Kinder II (October 8, 1946 – May 3, 2019) was an American novelist.
After teaching at Stanford and Waynesburg College, Kinder was a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught from 1980 until his retirement in 2014.
[1] At Stanford, Kinder became close friends with fellow students Raymond Carver and Scott Turow, and Stegner alumnus Larry McMurtry.
His relationship with Carver inspired his 2001 novel Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale, which for nearly twenty years had vexed Kinder and had grown, uncontrollably, into a sprawling manuscript of over 3,000 pages.
Michael Chabon, once an undergraduate student of Kinder's, used it as inspiration for the character Grady Tripp in the 1995 novel Wonder Boys.