Neal Thompson was born (1965) and raised in New Jersey, outside New York City. After graduating from the University of Scranton, he began his award-winning journalism career as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. For the next 15 years, he worked at newspapers up and down the East Coast - specializing in profiles, narratives and investigations - at such papers as the Roanoke Times & World-News in southwest Virginia, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Bergen Record in northern New Jersey. That was followed by nearly five years at the Baltimore Sun, where he covered the military and began researching Light This Candle. As a freelance journalist, he has written for numerous national magazines, including Outside, Esquire, Men's Health, Backpacker and the Washington Post Magazine, and newspapers such as the Christian Science Monitor. Thompson teaches creative non-fiction at the University of North Carolina-Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program. Thompson and his wife, Mary, were married in New York City in 1994 and have two sons, Sean and Leo. The family - along with dog, Frankly - now lives in the mountains outside Asheville, N.C., where Thompson is researching and writing his third book, the story of a high school football team in New Orleans. The book, tentatively titled Hurricane Season: New Orleans, a School and a Team, in the Time of Katrina, will be published by Free Press in 2007.