Peter Hamill


Life
1935- ; ed. Jesuit High School [NY]; son of Belfast Catholic parents, being the eldest of 7 children; left school at 16 and worked in Brooklyn Ship Yard, and afterwards joined US Navy; completed High School education with Jesuits; studied writing and painting at Mexico City College in 1956-57; studied at Pratt Institute and worked as graphic designer; became a journalist and started work with the New York Post in 1960; also worked for the New York Daily News, and New York Newsday, the Village Voice, New York magazine and Esquire; editor-in-chief of Post and the Daily News; covered 9/11 for the Daily News;
 
issued A Drinking Life (1994), a best selling memoir which spent 20 weeks on NY Times best seller list and tells the story of a son of Irish immigrants in Brooklyn who works as a journalist in Vietnam, Lebanon and N. Ireland and gives up drink on the brink of ruin 20 years before the date of composition; also A Killing for Christ (1968); The Gift (1973); Dirty Laundry (1978); The Deadly Piece (1979); The Guns of Heaven (1983); also two collections of short stories, Invisible City, and Tokyo Sketches; also Irrational Ravings (1971), Piecework (Jan. 1996), and News is a Verb (1998); appt. Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University, 2009; married to Fukiko Aoki, a journalist.

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Works
Novels
  • A Killing for Christ (World Pub. Co. 1968).
  • The Gift (NY: Random House 1973; Little, Brown & Co. 2005).
  • Flesh and Blood (NY: Random House 1977 & Bantam Books 1986).
  • Dirty Laundry (NY: Bantam Books 1978 & Doubleday Publishing 1985).
  • Deadly Piece (NY: Bantam Books 1979 & Golden Apple Books 1985).
  • The Guns of Heaven (Dorchester Pub. 1983; Bantam Books 1984; Golden Apple Books 1985; Doubleday Publishing 1985; Hard Case Crime Sept. 2006).
  • Loving Women (NY: Random House 1989; Pinnacle Books June 2003).
  • Snow in August (NY: Little, Brown & Co. 1997); Forever (Little, Brown & Co. 2002).
Short fiction
  • Invisible City: A New York Sketchbook (NY: Random House 1980).
  • Tokyo Sketches: Short Stories (Kodansha International 1992)
Journalism
  • Irrational Ravings (NY: Putnam 1996)
  • News Is A Verb: Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century (NY: Ballantine Books 1998)
Non-fiction (incls.)
  • The Times Square Gym (q.d.).
  • Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection (NY: Harry N. Abrams 1995 ).
  • Diego Rivera (NY: Harry N. Abrams 1999).
  • Subway Series Reader (NY: Simon & Schuster 2000).
  • Why Sinatra Matters (NY: Little, Brown & Co. 1998).
  • Downtown: My Manhattan (NY: Little, Brown & Co. 2004).
Miscellaneous
  • intro. to John Barleycorn by Jack London [Mod. Library Classics] (NY: Random House 2001 ).
  • Mexico: The Revolution and Beyond, photographs by Agustin Victor Casasola [1900-40], essay by Pete Hamill (NY: Aperture Foundation 2003).
  • intro. to The Great Riots of New York: 1712-1873 by Joel Tyler Headley (NY: Avalon Publ. Group/Thunder’s Mouth Press 2003).
  • intro. to Garden of Dreams: Madison Square Garden 125 Years [being] photography by George Kalinsky (NY: Stewart, Tabori and Chang 2004).
Memoir
A Drinking Life (Bayrock/Viking 1994; Wolfhound 1996) [Deirdre of the Sorrows Enterprises].

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References
There is a Pete Hamill website at www.petehamill.com.

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Notes
Peter Hamill has an address at 94, Horatio St., 602 NY NY, 10014 USA [212 366 0488]; he is related to Brendan Hamill of Belfast.

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