“You wake up in this here world, my sweet li'l mister, you got to wake up tough. You go out that front door tough of a mornin' and you stay tough 'til lights out—have you learned that?”

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.