January 21, 2025
January 24, 2024
The New York Times
October 31, 2023
MAY 22, 2023
january 29, 2022
Ida Applebroog: Pure Truth (Oral History Interviews with Randy Kennedy for Ursula magazine)
October 1, 2021
Jim Jarmusch in conversation with Randy Kennedy at James Fuentes Gallery
September 2, 2021
LA Weekly reviews Some Collages by Jim Jarmusch, with an introduction by Randy Kennedy
August 10, 2021
Jim Jarmusch talks with Vogue about his new book of collages, with an introduction by Randy Kennedy
April 20, 2021
January 26, 2021
November 27, 2020
American Blood, the collected writings of Danny Lyon, edited and with an introduction by Randy Kennedy, featured in The New York Times, Sunday Arts & Leisure.
April 11, 2020
December 19, 2019
September 12, 2019
August 6, 2019
Presidio named fiction finalist, 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards
July 29, 2019
July 12, 2019
Randy Kennedy Revisits a Not-So-Classic American Tale
Cultured magazine
July 10, 2019
July 1, 2019
Cover design for Presidio paperback, on sale August 6.
March 29, 2019
Presidio shortlisted for Reading the West Book Award
March 20, 2019
French edition of Presidio published by Delcourt Littérature
FEBRUARY 15, 2019
Critics’ Conversation: Why Directors Can't Stop Making Films About Artists
The Hollywood Reporter
december 23, 2018
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
december 21, 2018
Cowboys and Indians magazine
October 12, 2018
Art&Seek with Jerome Weeks, KERA, National Public Radio
October 8, 2018
Review: Hard-luck Brothers Flee Across Texas in Presidio
Houston Chronicle
september 17, 2018
Review: In Debut Novel, San Antonio Native Offers Bleak Look at West Texas
San Antonio Express-News
September 14, 2018
Review: The Road Goes On Forever
The Austin Chronicle
September 13, 2018
The New York Times Sunday Book Review
september 10, 2018
Presidio Author Randy Kennedy Tried to Flee Texas But Its ‘Messy Glory’ Brought Him Back Home
The Dallas Morning News
September 3, 2018
High Plains Drifter: A Review of Presidio by Lee Child
The New York Times Sunday Book Review
Kennedy’s various narrative voices sound like those of taciturn individuals who may never have heard a complete sentence except in church, who are now somehow compelled to speak, as if on the witness stand, at first hesitant, then finding sudden new pleasure in expressing themselves. … a fluent, mordant, authentic, propulsive narrative, wonderfully lit from within … This is his first novel and it left me hoping he writes many more.
SepTember 3, 2018
Two Very Different Novels Make for Great Late-Summer Reading
The Texas Standard
August 27, 2018
A Conversation about Presidio with Clay Smith and Megan Labrise
Kirkus Reviews' Fully Booked podcast
august 27, 2018
Review: Presidio's Main Man: Empty, Engaging
Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
AUGUST 21, 2018
Review: Randy Kennedy's First Novel, Presidio, Might Be The First Must-Read Texas Novel Of The Fall
The Dallas Morning News
August 20, 2018
Presidio on the Approval Matrix (Highbrow, Brilliant)
New York
August 17, 2018
In Randy Kennedy's Presidio, A Startling Road Trip Thriller Full of Twists and Turns
Vogue
August 12, 2018
Review: A Peculiarly American Restlessness
Lone Star Literary Life
August 1, 2018
Texas Monthly
July 23, 2018
Reading Tour Dates Announced For Presidio!
September 6, 7 p.m., Community Bookstore, 143 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.
September 11, 7 p.m., Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet Street, Houston, Texas.
September 12, 7 p.m, Interabang Books, 10720 Preston Road, Dallas, Texas.
September 13, 7 p.m., BookPeople, 603 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, Texas.
September 14, 7 p.m., Crowley Theater, 98 South Austin Street, Marfa, Texas (presented by the Marfa Book Company.)
September 18, 7 p.m., Karma Books, 136 East Third Street, New York, New York.
July 1, 2018
UT Alumnus' Debut Novel Takes Readers on a Texas Panhandle Adventure
Alcalde magazine
JUNE 1, 2018
Publishers Weekly review of Presidio:
In this stellar debut, it’s 1972, and Troy Falconer, a professional car thief, returns home to New Cona, Tex. Troy comes at the request of his younger brother, Harlan, whose wife, Bettie, has left him and taken all their money. The two brothers steal a car and hit the road in search of Bettie, unaware of the sleeping passenger in the backseat, Martha Zacharias, an 11-year-old runaway from a Mennonite community ... Like the young heroines of She Rides Shotgun, Martha is a memorably single-minded heroine who can stand up to adults engaged in unlawful pursuits. Kennedy soberly etches a Texas landscape of violence and despair as vividly as anything by Larry McMurtry.
May 28, 2018
Kirkus starred review of Presidio:
Two estranged brothers and an unexpected passenger embark on a road trip through Texas to recover stolen money in this strong debut.
Troy Falconer first appears in notes he's writing to explain how and why he frequents motels to steal cars, clothes, and another man’s identity. Two pages later an omniscient narrator describes Troy returning in November 1972 to his hometown in the Texas Panhandle for the first time in over six years. He and his brother, Harlan, have agreed to set aside grudges while trying to track down Harlan’s wife, who ran off with most of the money left him by the brothers’ father. Toggling between this narrative and the notes, Kennedy reveals one rootless man charting a larcenous course through America and one tied to a dot on the map: "I’ve spent my whole life here, Troy. Inside of a ten-mile radius," Harlan says. When Troy steals a car at a grocery store, the brothers are unaware that an 11-year-old named Martha is sleeping in the back seat. She adds a third narrative, of a father and daughter separated when he is jailed, wrongly, for kidnapping her, while she is placed with an aunt, whose Ford Country Squire station wagon catches Troy’s eye. The feisty girl wants the brothers to take her to El Paso and her father, but they have another target because Harlan says his wife “said something about Presidio once." Kennedy’s humor can be broad or sly. He reveals early on, for instance, the quest’s overarching absurdity when Troy says he connived with the woman who married Harlan to steal the inheritance. But she lit out on Troy as well. Kennedy has a fertile imagination he lets drift into many beguiling detours, and the writing sparkles throughout.
