William Kent Krueger is an American novelist and crime writer, best known for his series of novels featuring Cork O'Connor, which are set mainly in Minnesota. In 2005 and 2006, he won back-to-back Anthony Awards for best novel. In 2014, his stand-alone book Ordinary Grace won the Edgar Award for Best Novel of 2013. In 2019, This Tender Land was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly six months.

Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being expelled for radical activities. He subsequently logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. Krueger currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota, a city he dearly loves. He has been married for over fifty years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney.

He writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist, Cork O’Connor, is the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received numerous awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His recent stand-alone novel, The River We Remember, published in 2023, was featured on many best-of-the-year lists and received an Edgar Award nomination for Best Novel.

Call me Kent. I was born in Torrington, Wyoming, to a family full of wanderlust. Before I graduated from high school, I’d lived in eleven cities in six states. The dream of becoming a writer was my only real constant. I entered Stanford University in 1969, but after participating in Vietnam War protests, I left school. Over the next few years, I married Diane, the woman I’d met at Stanford, and we moved to St. Paul for her law school. During this time, I developed my writing discipline, rising early to write at a local café before work. This routine, though the café is long gone, remains a vital part of my creative process.