Hallie O'Neill

My Story

Since adolescence, I’ve been a writer, reader, learner, and lover of language. I studied English, creative writing, anthropology, and sociology as an undergraduate at Drake University, from where I graduated in 2019. After graduation, I spent 8 months as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Cheb, Czech Republic, where I taught English to high school students. After a premature grant closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I moved back home to Minnesota. I’ve worked in the nonprofit sector here in the Twin Cities since 2020, addressing community needs pertaining to education, mental health, equity, and access.

My desire to pursue creative writing had always quietly persisted throughout my studies and post-grad life. During the isolated height of the pandemic, I participated in a remote writing workshop with a few peers I met through Fulbright — including one who soon after accepted a position as Director of the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing, a low-residency MFA program housed at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. When he suggested that the members of our workshop apply, it took very little convincing. I earned my MA in nonfiction in the summer of 2022 and my full Creative Writing MFA in the summer of 2023.