Neil Connelly

As the last of ten kids, I was nicknamed "The Caboose."  Being part of a large and loving family defined me as a person.  I always had someone to listen to me tell stories, which provided me with lots of encouragement, something that can overcome a lack of raw talent.

In 1993 I basically begged my way into the MFA program at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, a long way from Allentown, Pennsylvania.  There I learned a great deal studying with Robert Olen Butler and the poet John Wood.  My thesis served as an early draft for what became my first novel, St. Michael's Scales.  I was fortunate enough to have the folks at Arthur A. Levine see potential in the pages, and in 2002 it was published as my first book.  A couple years later, Buddy Cooper Finds a Way was released by Simon and Schuster.  My work on The Miracle Stealer was put on hold when my first son arrived.  Truth be told, for a number of years I lost sight of the book's center.  But thanks to good reads from my agent Warren Frazier and my editor Cheryl Klein, I became reacquainted with its core. 

During my time in graduate school, I began teaching and found that I loved it dearly.  After leaving Lake Charles, I was an instructor at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, North Carolina.  This is an especially important place for me because it's where I met my wife, Beth, who changed the course of my life.  Just as this new life was taking shape though (in a plot twist that any decent workshop would rightly ridicule), I ended up being drawn back to Louisiana, replacing my old professor in the MFA program. Eventually I became director of the program that very nearly--and with good cause--rejected my initial application.  My time at McNeese has been amazing.  I've met a host of talented authors like Ron Carlson, Tim Gautreaux, ZZ Packer, and Antonya Nelson.  Running the graduate fiction workshop has been singularly gratifying.  I've had a chance to work with exceptional emerging writers, and seeing them grapple with their own work, being a midwife of sorts to short stories and novels, has been the thrill of my professional career. 

In the summer of 2010, I will be relocating along with Beth and our two boys, Owen and James, back to Pennsylvania.  I'm excited to be joining the faculty at Shippensburg University, where I will continue to teach creative writing.  In my new home, I'll be a short drive from the place I was born, where my father and many of my siblings still live.  My children will now be able to benefit from the same environment I thrived in as a boy.  I guess the caboose isn't always the end of the train.