Sean Conway lives north of Boston with his wife, Christine. He's considered himself a writer since his earliest years growing up in the suburbs of Massachusetts and, for a short time, San Diego, California, writing and illustrating countless Jaws homages (including his magnum opus, Jaws vs. Bigfoot) and his sixth-grade sci-fi epic, One Million Miles into Space (long before he realized a million miles wasn't really very far into space - science not being his strongest subject).
More recently, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans, completing most of his coursework in both Montpellier, France and Madrid, Spain. He's even detoured to run with the bulls in Pamplona.
His novel Land's End was called "hard to put down" by Writer's Digest, and was a semi-finalist in their 2020 book contest. Publisher's Weekly said it was "effortlessly poetic [and] beautifully written." And in 2018, the opening chapter was featured in Embark: A Literary Journal for Novelists.
His short fiction can be found in the anthology Mental Ward: Stories from the Asylum (Sirens Call Publications, 2013), as well as various literary journals both print and online, including Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, Digital Americana, Glassworks, and ​Long Story, Short. His story "Scratch" was nominated for the Million Writers Award, celebrating the best in online fiction, and "Pass/Fail" has been long-listed in the Ropewalk Press fiction chapbook contest. In addition, he has received a fellowship from the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, as well as a Jack Kerouac Award, funded by the Kerouac estate.
In his past life he's been a bartender and a mental health counselor for Boston-area locked-door psychiatric facilities. He now teaches English in Maynard, Massachusetts, and is a senior adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he has taught in the Honors College both on campus and in San Sebastian, Spain. His new course is called "Immigration Stories: Researching & Writing the Past."
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Read "The 12 Most Influential Books on My Writing" here.
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"A real star...his work is ambitious and accomplished, filled with wit, wisdom, and compassion...He has an unerring eye for details of everyday life...[and] ranks within a modest handful." - Jill McCorkle