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William E. Kennedy

Goodreads Author

Born

in Peoria, Illinois, The United States

Twitter

billkennedy14

Genre

Children's, Historical Fiction

Member Since

March 2014

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Bill Kennedy started writing stories as a child. He wrote an adult novel "The Singing Bone," to discover more about his father who never spoke about the old country. He received his MFA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. He now focuses his writing on middle grade novels that feature Tramp, the world’s best dog detective. He lives in North Dakota. ...more

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William E. Kennedy’s books

Average rating: 4.26 · 23 ratings · 9 reviews · 2 distinct works

	Tramp: A Detective Story 4.58 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2014 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Singing Bone 3.91 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 2011 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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William is Currently Reading

William Kennedy is currently reading

The Gene: An Intimate History

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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Nov 20, 2016 10:06AM

William Kennedy is currently reading

Lincoln in the Bardo

by George Saunders

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Mar 13, 2017 07:16AM

Quotes by William E. Kennedy (?)

“Irish Tale Anonymous The Singing Bone hums when a blood memory rises up from the past. There has been no narrative, no discussion of the event that is recalled. It is as simple as a chin passed through the generations, but more revealing and dangerous to the descendent. The singing bone lies amongst the tiny bones of the middle ear. It is a very rare and special event when it is touched. ”
― William E. Kennedy, The Singing Bone

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¡ POETRY ! — 22572 members — last activity Dec 24, 2025 01:37PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more