He was married to the Japanese journalist, Fukiko Aoki, and they divided their time between New York City and Cuernavaca, Mexico. Hamill was the father of two daughters, and has a grandson.

In 2004, he published Downtown: My Manhattan, a non-fiction account of his love affair with New York, and received much critical acclaim.

His most recently published novel was North River (2007). His novel, Forever, was published by Little, Brown in January 2003 and became a New York Times bestseller. Abrams published his acclaimed book on the Mexican painter Diego Rivera. He has published two collections of his journalism ( Irrational Ravings and Piecework), an extended essay on journalism called News Is a Verb, a book about the relationship of tools to art, a biographical essay called Why Sinatra Matters, dealing with the music of the late singer and the social forces that made his work unique. His memoir, A Drinking Life, was on the same New York Times list for 13 weeks. His 1997 novel, Snow in August, was on the New York Times bestseller list for four months. He published nine novels and two collections of short stories. He witnessed the events of Septemand its aftermath and wrote about them for the Daily News.Īt the same time, Hamill wrote much fiction, including movie and TV scripts. From his base in New York he also covered murders, fires, World Series, championship fights and the great domestic disturbances of the 1960s, and wrote extensively on art, jazz, immigration and politics. As a journalist, he covered wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Lebanon and Northern Ireland, and has lived for extended periods in Mexico City, Dublin, Barcelona, San Juan and Rome. He has served as editor-in-chief of both the Post and the Daily News. He has been a columnist for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and New York Newsday, the Village Voice, New York magazine and Esquire. Then in 1960, he went to work as a reporter for the New York Post. For several years, he worked as a graphic designer. Bill of Rights, he attended Mexico City College in 1956-1957, studying painting and writing, and later went to Pratt Institute.

Then, using the educational benefits of the G.I. While serving in the Navy, he completed his high school education. He left school at 16 to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a sheetmetal worker, and then went on to the United States Navy. in 1935, the oldest of seven children of immigrants from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Pete Hamill was a novelist, essayist and journalist whose career has endured for more than forty years.

Forever by Pete Hamill