Get to know John Kenney

John Kenney is the author of three novels and four books of poetry, including LOVE POEMS FOR MARRIED PEOPLE. His first novel, TRUTH IN ADVERTISING, won the Thurber Prize for American humor. He is also the author of TALK TO ME, which received a starred Kirkus review. He is a long-time contributor to The New Yorker magazine’s Shouts & Murmurs. He lives in Larchmont, NY, with his wife, Lissa, and two children.

Hometown

Boston, MA

Fun fact

I worked on the archeological dig of King Herod The Great’s Winter Palace in Jericho. (I can’t be 100 percent sure but I think I found his house keys.)

Favorite author

Impossible question. Names that easily come to mind: Alice McDermott. Don Delillo. Richard Ford. Patty Marx. J.D. Salinger.

Favorite place in the world

Home with the family.

Favorite place to read

The Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. Although I am no longer let in, as apparently they have a strict policy against nudity.

Books by John Kenney

I See You've Called in Dead

Published April 1, 2025

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER 

"Razor-sharp, darkly comedic, and emotionally piercing. With the satirical bite of Richard Russo’s Straight Man, the introspection of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove, and the reinvention of Andrew Sean Greer's Less, Kenney’s vivid prose transforms the mundane into unexpected hilarity."
—Booklist (starred review)

An Indie Next & LibraryReads Pick for April
Winner of the AudioFiles Earphones Award

The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story. 

Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living. 

As Bud awaits his fate at work, his life hangs in the balance. Given another shot by his boss and encouraged by his best friend, Tim, a worldly and wise former art dealer who is now confined to a wheelchair, Bud starts to attend the wakes and funerals of strangers to learn how to live.

Thurber Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling author John Kenney tells a funny, touching story about life and death, about the search for meaning, about finding and never letting go of the preciousness of life.

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I See You've Called in Dead

Sometimes I feel like just going out and, I don’t know, stealing a traffic cone and putting it on my head and saying, ‘Look at me! I’m a giant witch!’

Alan Partridge