Douglas Kennedy was born in Manhattan on New Year’s Day 1955. A third generation New Yorker he was raised in the very middle-class area of 19th Street and Second Avenue, south of Gramercy Park. When he was nine his family emigrated north to the Upper West Side. He spent his childhood caught between feuding parents and quickly learnt self-reliance, spending much of his adolescence loitering with intent in the theatres, cinemas, concert halls, jazz clubs, libraries and museums of New York. As such, this escape from the grim realities of home life turned him into a self-described ‘culture vulture’ early on – a passion that still defines his life today. And it also turned him (latterly in his fiction) into an acute observer of family dynamics and marital mess.

 

The family move to the Upper West Side came about after he was offered a place at The Collegiate School – first founded by the Dutch in 1628 (when New York was New Amsterdam) and considered one of the most prestigious of New York schools. “I received an extraordinary classical education at Collegiate – and, as a middle-class kid at a school filled with the sons of the city’s great and good, I also learned early on that money is a slippery veneer’ (a theme also found everywhere in his novels). After Collegiate he attended Bowdoin College, from which he graduated magna cum laude with High Honors in History in 1976. While at Bowdoin he also spent a year studying at Trinity College Dublin. After college he was a journalist on a local Maine newspaper, then worked in several off-Broadway theatres as a stage manager In March 1977, while "in between jobs", he decided to spend a couple of weeks visiting friends in Dublin.
 
This two-week journey turned into a thirty-four year residency on the other side of the Atlantic.
 
Within a week of returning to Dublin in the spring of 1977, Douglas co-founded a theatre company - Stage One - which began its initial season that summer. Eighteen months later - after the third Stage One season - he joined the National Theatre of Ireland (the Abbey Theatre) as administrator of its experimental theatre, The Peacock.
 
During his five years at The Peacock (1978-83), he started to write late at night. He sold his first play, "Shakespeare on a Five Dollars A Day" - to BBC Radio 4 in 1980. It also received productions by RTE in Ireland and the ABC in Australia. This was followed by two other radio plays with far-too-clever titles: "Floating Down the Nile on the Oxford English Dictionary" and "The Don Giovanni Blues", both broadcast on Radio 4.
 
In the summer of 1983, Douglas resigned his position at The Peacock to write full-time. To pay the rent, he began to freelance as a journalist, initially contributing to most of the major Irish newspapers, including The Irish Times, for which he wrote a column between 1984-6. In 1986, his first stage play - "Send Lawyers, Guns and Money" - opened at The Peacock to disastrous reviews and no ticket sales. It is still remembered as one of the biggest flops in the history of Ireland's National Theatre. Shortly thereafter, his column was dropped by The Irish Times - and he decided that his years in Dublin were drawing to a close.
 
In March 1988, Douglas moved to London. The same month, his first book – “Beyond the Pyramids” - was published by Unwin Hyman. He also began to write for The Listener, New Statesman, and The Sunday Times. A second travel book, “In God's Country”, was published in July 1989, followed by “Chasing Mammon” - published by Harper Collins in 1992. All three books were critically acclaimed, but he continued his work as a successful jobbing journalist, now also contributing to The Times, The Independent, Sunday Telegraph, Arena, Esquire and GQ.
 
In 1994, his first novel, “The Dead Heart”, was published by Little Brown. The film rights were bought by Scala Productions and the Samuel Goldwyn Company, and the subsequent film, “Welcome to Woop Woop”, was released in 1997, directed by Stephan Elliot ("Priscilla, Queen of the Desert").
 
“The Big Picture” (1997), Douglas’s second novel, was an international success story. Its American publication rights sold for a seven-figure sum. It became a national bestseller in the United States and was translated into 22 languages. It also won a WH Smith Award and was named as one of the Books of the Year in 1998 by the prestigious French literary magazine, Lire. To date, it has sold over three million copies worldwide. “The Big Picture” was filmed in France in 2010 as ‘L’Homme Qui Voulait Vivre Sa Vie’, directed by Eric Lartigau and starring Romain Duris and Marina Fois and Catherine Deneuve.
 
Kennedy’s fourth novel, “The Pursuit of Happiness” (2001), marked a radical departure from his previous psychological thrillers. A great tragic love story, narrated by two women and set amidst the post-war optimism of New York in the 1940s and the subsequent nightmare of the McCarthy witch hunts, “The Pursuit of Happiness” revealed Kennedy’s unique ability to write about the intricacies of family set amidst the broad sweep of history. Published by Hutchinson in the UK, by Belfond in France, and by Atria in the United States to widespread critical and commercial acclaim, it has been translated into fifteen languages and was short-listed for France's prestigious "Prix des Lectrices". The book was a Top 10 Sunday Times bestseller and a No. 1 bestseller in Ireland for 4 weeks and has, to date, sold over two million copies.
 
Kennedy’s subsequently acclaimed novels include: “A Special Relationship” (2004), ‘State of the Union” (2006), “The Woman in the Fifth” (20070, ‘Leaving the World’ (2009), “The Moment” (2011), “Five Days” (2014), “The Blue Hour’ (2016), and “Isabelle in the Afternoon” (2020). He has sold over fifteen million copies of his novels worldwide.
 
Renowned in France as an iconic writer (not to mention a fluent Francophone), he was awarded in 2007 the French decoration of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2009 he received the inaugural Grand Prix de Figaro.  He has also published a book of philosophy, “All the Big Questions... With No Attempts At Any Answers” (‘Toutes ces grandes questions sans réponse’). His acclaimed children’s book series – “Aurore’s Amazing Adventures” (a collaboration with the great French illustrator Joann Sfar) was published in France from 2019-2022. His last two critically lauded novels were politically overt in the questions they raise about the deep-rooted divisions and disparities in modern American life. “Afraid of the Light” examined the tinderbox that is anti-abortion violence from the perspective of a one-time member of the middle class now forced to earn his living as an Uber driver. ‘Flyover’ (‘Et C’est Ainsi Que Nous Vivrons”) was published in 2023. Set in 2045, when the United States has been divided into two disparate countries, it was best seller in France where it was also lauded as one of the most disturbing novels of anticipation to be published in recent years.

 

Twice married, twice divorced, Douglas is the exceedingly proud father of Max, a London-based photographer, and Amelia, a New York-based actor-playwright. He now calls Maine home, but also lives in Paris and Berlin when he isn’t traveling.