Neal Thompson is a veteran journalist who has worked for the Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, and St. Petersburg Times, and whose magazine stories have appeared in Outside, Esquire, Backpacker, and Men's Health. He teaches at the University of North Carolina-Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program and is author of Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard, America's First Spaceman. Thompson, his wife, and their two sons live in the mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina.