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.
Biographical details
Krueger has said that he wanted to be a writer from the third grade when his story "The Walking Dictionary" was praised by his teacher and parents. He attended Stanford University, but his academic path was cut short when he came into conflict with the university's administration during student protests of spring 1970. Throughout his early life, he supported himself by logging timber, digging ditches, working in construction, and being published as a freelance journalist; he never stopped writing.
He wrote short stories and sketches for many years, but it was not until the age of 40 that he finished the manuscript of his first novel, Iron Lake. It won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the Barry Award for Best First Novel, the Minnesota Book Award, and the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award.
Marriage and family
Krueger is married and has two children. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Writing influences
Krueger has said his favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. He grew up reading Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James T. Farrell. Most influential among these was Hemingway. In an interview for Shots magazine, Krueger described his admiration for Hemingway's prose:
His prose is clean, his word choice perfect, his cadence precise and powerful. He wastes nothing. In Hemingway, what's not said is often the whole point of a story. I like that idea, leaving the heart off the page so that the words, the prose itself, is the first thing to pierce you. Then the meaning comes.
Krueger prefers to write early in the morning. Rising at 5.30 am, he goes to the nearby St. Clair Broiler, where he would drink coffee and write longhand in wire-bound notebooks. The St. Clair Broiler permanently closed their doors in the fall of 2017. He began going to the St. Clair Broiler when he was in his 30s and had to make time for writing early in the morning before going to work at the University of Minnesota. He has continued the habit and has his own booth there. In return for his loyalty, the restaurant has hosted book launches for Krueger. At one of them, the staff wore T-shirts emblazoned with "A nice place to visit. A great place to die."
Setting in the Cork O'Connor series
When Krueger decided to set the series in northern Minnesota, he realized that a large percentage of the population was of mixed ancestry. In college, he had wanted to become a cultural anthropologist; he became intrigued by researching the Ojibwe culture and weaving the information into his books. His books are set in and around Native American reservations. The main character, Cork O'Connor, is part Ojibwe and part Irish. Krueger has read the first Ojibwe historian, William Whipple Warren, Gerald Vizenor and Basil Johnston. He has also read novels by Louise Erdrich and Jim Northrup. Krueger began to meet theOjibwe people and because of his interest in their culture. Krueger believes that the sense of place is made resonant by the actions and emotions of the characters within it. He describes it as "a dynamic bond that has the potential to heighten the drama of every scene."
