Stephen P. O'Connor is a native of Lowell, Massachusetts, home of Beat author Jack Kerouac, where much of his writing is set. He is the author of Smokestack Lightning, a collection of short stories, and the novels The Spy in the City of Books and The Witch at Rivermouth." O'Connor has worked as a roofer, a garbage collector, a harvester of grapes, a drywall man, a shoe salesman, a factory hand, and for more than twenty years, a high school teacher. He earned master's degrees from University College Dublin and UMass Boston, and has lived and worked in Ireland and in France. O'Connor lives with his wife Olga and their two children in Lowell. When he's not working or writing he can be found walking in the woods, drinking coffee downtown, playing soccer with the old boys or cranking out Irish tunes on a fiddle inherited from his Uncle Eddie.