Peter O’Neil grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, with a curiosity
about language and culture that pulled him out into the world early. After college he joined the
Peace Corps and spent two years in a mountain village in Cameroon, where he found two things
he had not expected: a vocation for teaching mathematics, and the deep pleasure of befriending
people whose lives looked nothing like his own. His teaching career has since taken him to
international schools in Venezuela, Cairo, Paris, New Delhi, and Moscow. He now lives in
Evanston, Illinois, the next town south of where he grew up.
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