Author Bio

 

PATRICK O'NEIL was born in Melbourne in 1978 and grew up in Richmond and Hawthorn.

He completed an Arts degree at Melbourne University, majoring in English and International Politics, though he nearly failed creative writing twice.

He has worked as a cleaner at a butcher shop, a waiter, barman, newspaper copyboy and reporter on a Melbourne metro daily newspaper before quitting to travel and become a full-time writer.

Since then he has worked at a pizza shop, done a brief stint as a DJ in a Colombian nightclub, written headlines for a newspaper in Darwin and hung Christmas decorations in shopping centres.

In between gigs and semesters he travelled extensively through South America, Eastern and Western Europe, the US, Asia, Morocco, Turkey and Australia. He has spent every cent he’s ever made on travelling. He has lived in New York, Colombia and Darwin but currently resides in Melbourne.

His debut memoir, Sideways: Travels with Kafka, Hunter S. & Kerouac, was first published by Penguin in March 2009 and reprinted in March 2010.