“In February of 1972, a snowstorm blew into Kansas City, and I decided to hitchhike to California. The roads were icy, snowflakes howling, and nobody would drive me to the highway, so I humped through the snow and ice and caught a ride with a concerned cop to the Kansas Turnpike.”

American novelist and short story writer

Daniel Woodrell is an American novelist and short story writer, known for fiction set largely in the Missouri Ozarks. He wrote nine novels and one collection of short stories, and his work has become closely associated with the term he coined, "country noir". Woodrell used that phrase for his 1996 novel Give Us a Kiss, and reviewers later adopted it to describe his writing more broadly. His fiction is often linked to rural Missouri, especially the Ozarks, which gives his books a distinctive regional setting and tone.