Tom McNeal

Tom was born in Santa Ana, California. His father was a native Californian who raised oranges, and his mother grew up on a farm in northwest Nebraska, where Tom spent his childhood summers. After earning a BA and a teaching credential from UC Berkeley, Tom moved to Hay Springs, Nebraska, taught high school English, drove a school bus, substituted briefly in a one-room schoolhouse, and began work on the novel GOODNIGHT, NEBRASKA. Tom holds an MA in creative writing from UC Irvine and was a Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. His short stories have been widely anthologized, and "What Happened to Tully" was made into a film. He is the author, with his wife, Laura, of four critically-acclaimed young adult novels published by Knopf, and the solo author of FAR FAR AWAY (a finalist for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature). His most recent novel for adults, TO BE SUNG UNDERWATER, was published by Little Brown in 2012 and named one of the best books of the year by the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.