Pete Hamill was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. in 1935, the oldest of seven
children of immigrants from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He attended Catholic schools, leaving school at 16 to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a sheet metal worker, and then going on to the United States Navy. While serving in the Navy, he completed his high school education. Using the educational benefits of the G.I. Bill of Rights, he attended Mexico City College in 1956-1957, studying painting and writing, and later went to Pratt Institute.
After working as a graphic designer for a few years he joined the New York Post as a reporter in 1960 and has been a journalist ever since. He was a columnist for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and New York Newsday, the Village Voice, New York magazine and Esquire. He was also
editor-in-chief of both the Post and the Daily News.
As a journalist, he covered wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Lebanon and Northern Ireland, and has lived for extended periods in Mexico City, Dublin, Barcelona, San Juan and Rome. From his base in New York he also covered murders, fires, World Series, championship fights and the great domestic disturbances of the 1960s, and wrote extensively on art, jazz, immigration and politics. He witnessed the events of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath and wrote about them for the Daily News.
He wrote much fiction, including movie and TV scripts. He published ten novels and two collections of short stories.
He was the father of two daughters and was married to the Japanese journalist, Fukiko Aoki. He died in New York City in early August 2020 of kidney and heart failure aged 85.
Fiction Bibliography
A Killing for Christ (1968)
The Gift (1973)
Flesh and Blood (1977)
Dirty Laundry (1978)
Deadly Piece (1979)
The Guns of Heaven (1983)
Loving Women (1989)
Snow in August (1997)
Forever (2002)
North River (2007)
Tabloid City (2011)
Pete Hamill's website
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