Thomas E. Kennedy

BIO | WORK

Thomas E. Kennedy's books include 11 volumes of fiction, 4 essay collections, 4 volumes of literary criticism and several anthologies. His most recent book-length publications include Riding the Dog: A Look Back at America (essays), 2008; Cast Upon the Day (stories), 2007; and A Passion in the Desert (novel), 2007. Kennedy considers the central part of his oeuvre to be the novels of The Copenhagen Quartet — four independent novels about the souls and seasons of his adopted city, Copenhagen; these include: Kerrigan's Copenhagen, A Love Story (2002), Bluett's Blue Hours (2003), Greene's Summer (2004), and Danish Fall (2005). His stories, essays, translations, poetry and interviews appear regularly in American and European periodicals, and he serves as Advisory Editor for The Literary Review (for which he guest-edited the 2008 anthology, New Danish Writing) and Absinthe: New European Writing. Two of his novels have won Eric Hoffer Awards, and his stories have won O. Henry and Pushcart prizes and been cited many times as notables in the Pushcart and Best American Short Stories volumes. In 2008 Kennedy won the prestigious "Ellie" (the U.S. National Magazine Award) in the essay category. In 2005, Harper College produced a DVD documentary film about Kennedy's four novels, The Copenhagen Quartet, and in 2007, a Panel of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) entitled "Thomas E. Kennedy: A Lifetime in Literature" heard six scholarly presentations on his fiction. He is a member of the Core Faculty of the Fairleigh Dickinson University Master of Fine Arts Program and holds an MFA from Vermont College and PhD from the University of Copenhagen.