Nathaniel C. Oliver was raised in the small town of Phil Campbell. While pursuing his master's degree in English at the University of South Alabama, he wrote A Simple Kind of Man, a novel of interconnected short stories inspired by his youth in rural Alabama. Currently, he works as an adjunct instructor of English at a community college and as a freelance writer. He lives in Sheffield, Alabama with the two loves of his life, his fiancee and their young daughter.