William Kennedy was born in Albany, New York in 1928. He grew up in a predominately Irish Catholic neighborhood, attended Sienna College, and worked briefly as a sportswriter for the Post Star in Glen Falls, New York. He was drafted into the Army in 1950, where he worked as a journalist in Europe, and after his discharge became a reporter for the Times-Union newspaper in Albany. In 1956 he relocated to Puerto Rico and became managing editor of the San Juan Star in 1959. There he met Saul Bellow, who encouraged his literary aspirations, and Dana Sosa, whom he married and with whom he had three children.
