William Kent Krueger

Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger (he goes by Kent) briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at free-lance journalism, and eventually ended
up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves.

Krueger writes the New York Times bestselling Cork O’Connor mystery series, which is set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist, Corcoran O’Connor, is the former sheriff of the fictional Tamarack County, and also a man of mixed heritage—part Irish-American and part Ojibwe. Krueger’s work has received a number of awards, including the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. He does all his writing in a couple of wonderfully funky St. Paul coffee shops.

This Tender Land, the companion novel to his Edgar Award-winning Ordinary Grace, spent six months among the top ten on the New York Times bestseller list. His stand alone mystery novel The River We Remember is scheduled for release in September 2023.