William Joseph Kennedy (born January 16, 1928) is an American writer and journalist who won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for his 1983 novel Ironweed.

Kennedy's other works include The Ink Truck (1969), Legs (1975), Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978), Roscoe (2002) and Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (2011).

: Improbable City of Political Wizards, Fearless Ethnics, Spectacular Aristocrats, Splendid Nobodies, and Underrated Scoundrels (1983).

[8][4][9] Kennedy began pursuing a career in journalism after college by joining the Post Star in Glens Falls as a sports reporter.

[4] He worked for the Times Union as an investigative journalist, writing stories exposing activities of Daniel P. O'Connell and his political cronies in the dominant Democratic Party.

[6][9] The novel was commercially successful,[11] and it won Kennedy a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award.

[4] Kennedy's other novels include Quinn’s Book (1988), Very Old Bones (1992), The Flaming Corsage (1996), Roscoe (2002), and Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (2011).

[4] Kennedy's use of Albany as the setting for eight of his novels was described in 2011 by book critic Jonathan Yardley as painting "a portrait of a single city perhaps unique in American fiction".