Neil O'Boyle Connelly was born in Pennsylvania and currently lives in Louisiana. He is the author of the novels Saint Michael's Scales, which was a finalist for the 2002 Borders Original Voices series and Buddy Cooper Finds a Way. He is a professor of English and is the Director of Creative Writing at McNeese State University, his own Alma Mater, in one of the longest running MFA writing programs in the United States. Connelly studied under founder of the McNeese MFA program, John Wood, then later under Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Olen Butler. His story "The Adventures of Ultimate Man" was published in River City and subsequently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2006, Oxford American included him in a list of prominent novelists of the Southern United States.
His third novel, The Healer Boy's Sister, will be published in fall of 2010.