Michael P. McKinney

 

STORIES. I've followed them across Buzzards Bay beaches fouled by a ruptured oil barge, to rescue workers aiding birds coated in the sludge. Stories put me in a courtroom where a mother, part of a religious sect cut off from the world, had to answer murder charges for keeping her son, on sect leaders’ orders, on a strict diet that led to his death. I've reported on a mother's long battle over her autistic son's schooling and listened as a man recounted the life he’d built with his fiancée, who died in one of the deadliest nightclub fires in U.S. history.

 

Growing up in Wilton, Conn., I dabbled in sports, pitching for my school’s baseball team, drafted improbably into playing as a forward for the soccer team—albeit, the “thirds” (as in the leftovers: not varsity, not junior varsity)—and racing a go-kart on tracks up and down the East Coast (three-time, back-to-back champion in Wilton!). I loved music too, bending guitar strings. But from the days of reading "Go Dog Go" to William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury,” I knew I wanted to write. 

 

I'm the first journalist in the family, but not the first story teller. My grandmother Phyllis McKinney was a stage actress turned school librarian. She instilled in me the love for language. My grandfather Duane McKinney, or Michael Duane, his stage name, was also a stage and film actor, starring in some of The Whistler movies. For many years, he was a set designer for Kraft Television Theatre, a groundbreaking series that aired live on NBC in the 1950s. Most notably, he created the sets for "A Night to Remember," an account of the Titanic sinking, an elaborate design that required flooding soundstages in Brooklyn, N.Y. Years later, I wrote about his work.