William Kowalski

Kowalski is the eldest child of Dr. William John Kowalski, Jr. of Buffalo, N.Y. (born 1942) and Kathleen Emily Siepel of Angola, N.Y. (b. 1942). In 1974, the family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania. He attended Erie Day School from 1976 to 1984, Cathedral Preparatory School for Boys from 1984 to 1985, and McDowell High School from 1985 to 1988, where he played bass in the rock group Gideon Winter, which was named after a major character in the novel Floating Dragon by Peter Straub. He also acted in numerous high school and community theater productions.

Kowalski has said that he realized he wanted to be a writer when he was about six years old, and that he began to pursue that dream soon after.[2] In 1988, Kowalski attended the Mercyhurst College Summer Writer's Institute, where he studied under Dr. Ken Schiff (founder of the institute) and the late W.S. "Jack" Kuniczak (novelist and noted translator of Sienkiewicz). He matriculated at Boston's Emerson College in 1988, where he majored in Creative Writing, but dropped out in 1989 to devote himself to writing full-time, believing that he was focusing too much on writing at the expense of gaining the life experiences he needed to have something to write about:

We have far too many writers in America these days who are expert stylists but who really aren't writing about anything. They can write like hell, but they don't have much to say, because they haven't done anything except study writing. As soon as I realized I was in danger of having this happen to me, I dropped out of college ... Life makes writers--nothing else does.[2]

As a result, he took a year off from school and worked at two now-defunct Boston bookstores, Avenue Victor Hugo and Globe Corner Bookstore.

In 1990, Kowalski matriculated at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a four-year program whose curriculum consists of the "Great Books" of Western Civilization, including not only literature, but also philosophy, mathematics, the sciences, music and art. He believes this program made him "more well-rounded, and as a result, a more interesting person ... ".[2]

Kowalski has stated that his literary influences include Ernest Hemingway and John Irving, Spanish-language authors Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez, and more-populist authors like spy writer John le Carré, southwestern author Tony Hillerman and sea-story writer Patrick O'Brian.[2]

Kowalski is the author of five works of literary fiction. Eddie's Bastard (1999), Somewhere South of Here (2001),[1] The Adventures of Flash Jackson (2003), and The Good Neighbor (2004) were all published in the U.S. by HarperCollins and in the United Kingdom by Transworld/Doubleday/Black Swan. The Hundred Hearts (2013) was published by Thomas Allen Publishers (now Dundurn) in Canada and will be published in German by Eichborn/Luebbe in 2015.

Kowalski also writes shorter books for adults with literacy challenges, called Rapid Reads. These are published by Orca Books' Raven imprint. These are The Barrio Kings (April 2010), The Way It Works (2010), Something Noble (March 2012), and Just Gone (September 2013). His fifth Rapid Reads book, The Innocence Device, will be published by Orca/Raven in the fall of 2014. Something Noble, a novel about redemption in a neighborhood blighted by gang violence, has been translated into Swedish and Korean.

Kowalski's work has been translated into fifteen languages and has appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including The Times of London.

Kowalski is married to Alexandra Nedergaard (b. 1968) of Toronto, Ontario. They have two children.

• Official site
• Curled Up With A Good Book (interview)
• Overlooked Classics of American Literature (review)
• The Hundred Hearts reviewed in National Post
• The Hundred Hearts reviewed in Winnipeg Review
• The Hundred Hearts reviewed in Globe and Mail
• The Hundred Hearts on LaineyGossip.com