About the McNeals

Tom McNeal was born and raised in Santa Ana, California, but spent part of every summer at the Nebraska farm where his mother grew up. After earning a BA in English at UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing at UC Irvine, he taught school in the town that was the inspiration for his novel, Goodnight, Nebraska. Tom has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, and his short stories have been widely anthologized. As you can see, he's a dog person.

Laura Rhoton McNeal was born in Arizona and raised near Air Force bases in Iceland, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Utah. In this picture, she looks like she's going to launch into a country-western song, but she's just channeling those hopeful, naive years when she sang Karen Carpenter songs into a wooden spoon. She holds an MA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and taught middle and high school English in Salt Lake City, where she gave a lot of homework.

The McNeals were married in 1993 and now live in southern California
with their two sons, Sam and Hank, who are given too much
homework (cosmic punishment for Laura). Their living room is not usually this tidy.

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