awrence Kessenich is a fiction writer, poet, playwright, essayist, reviewer, and editor. His first novel, Cinnamon Girl, was published in 2016. His second novel, The Further Adventures of Daisy Miller is scheduled to be published by Pierian Springs Press in fall 2024. He has also published some short stories and won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Prize in Ireland. Kessenich has six books of poetry: Before Whose Glory, Age of Wonders, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, Strange News and Pearl. His short plays have been produced in New York, Boston, and in Colorado, where he won the People’s Choice Award in a national drama competition. His full-length play, Anne Frank Lives!, was performed at a festival in New York City. He has also published essays, one of which was featured on NPR’s “This I Believe” and appears in the anthology This I Believe: On Love. 
   ​Kessenich was born and raised in Wisconsin in a loving family with nine children. He attended St. Monica’s grade school in Whitefish Bay, Messmer High School in the city of Milwaukee, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was also briefly in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. After attending the Radcliffe Publishing Course, he spent 10 years in the trade editorial department at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, where he edited Shoeless Joe, the basis for the movie Field of Dreams (in which he and his wife Janet appear onscreen as extras), and many other fiction and nonfiction books.
   ​Since leaving book publishing, Kessenich has made his living first as a technical writer and then as a marketing writer. He has also taught classes on writing and book publishing. He lives in the Boston area and is happy to consider readings, speaking engagements, workshops, and writing and editing work.