Hamill, Pete (Wlliam Peter Hamill Jr.), 1935–2020, American journalist and author, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. He served in the U.S. Navy (1952–56) and worked as a graphic designer (1957–60) before being hired by the New York Post. He spent his newspaper career there and at New York's Daily News, Newsday, and Village Voice, writing about working-class New Yorkers, while also penning novels, biographies, and screenplays. After a year in Europe writing for The Saturday Evening Post during a newspaper strike, he returned (1964) to New York and the Post, now with his own column. Hamill reached a national audience writing for magazines, including Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. Hired as editor of the Post in 1993, he was fired, rehired, then became editor of the Daily News in 1997, resigning under pressure after eight months. His novels include A Killing for Christ (1968), about a plot to kill the pope, Dirty Laundry (1978), a murder mystery that drew on his knowledge of Irish immigrants in New York, and Forever (2003), about a man granted eternal life, as long as he never leaves Manhattan.
See his memoir, A Drinking Life (1994).
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