Early Years
Finnegan was born in New York City in 1952. He was raised in Los Angeles and Hawaii. He graduated from William Howard Taft High School in Woodland Hills, California and received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1974 with a degree in Literature. During his youth he took up surfing, which became a lifelong passion he still practices off Long Island when at home. Finnegan spent the next four years taking seasonal jobs and working on an MFA in creative writing at the University of Montana. Finnegan then spent four years abroad, traveling in Asia, Australia, and Africa. He supported himself with freelance travel writing and other odd jobs, but upon reaching Cape Town, South Africa, Finnegan was in need of a job. He found a position as an English teacher at Grassy Park High School, a school for "coloured" students. Finnegan’s teaching experience coincided with a nationwide school boycott, giving him fodder for his first book, Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid, which was published in 1986 and was selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best nonfiction books of the year.
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