Mark Connelly was born in Philadelphia and grew up in New Jersey. He received a BA in English from Carroll College in Wisconsin and an MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His books include The Diminished Self: Orwell and the Loss of Freedom, Orwell and Gissing, Deadly Closets: The Fiction of Charles Jackson, and
The IRA on Film and Television. His fiction has appeared in The Ledge, Indiana Review,Cream City Review, Milwaukee Magazine, and Home Planet News. His novella Fifteen
Minutes received the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize and was published by Texas ReviewPress in 2005.