William Joseph Kennedy is an American writer and journalist born on January 16, 1928, in Albany, New York. He is widely recognized for his works that often incorporate elements of Albany's history and the supernatural, focusing on the interaction of members of the fictional Irish-American Phelan family.

Kennedy's notable works include The Ink Truck (1969), Legs (1975), Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978), Ironweed (1983), which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted into a film in 1987, and Roscoe (2002).