Neil was born in 1967, and adopted 6 months later. He was married in Las Vegas in 1997 and has babies. He loves writing Australia and will continue to do so. Recently turning his back on music to pursue writing he took a position as a youth worker. He is working on his novel 'The Sharing of Men and Women'.

SEE THROUGH, a short story collection (University of Queensland Press) was the first major break for Boyack in 1996. SEE THROUGH showcased works previously published in the seminal and influential self published works BLACK and SNAKESKIN / VANILLA. The critics loved and hated these early works, applauding Boyack's raw Australian energy and urban jaggedness, although many like Carmel Bird fobbed them off as full of "grey areas", but one gets the feeling when revising her reviews that anything under the upper crust is somehow not worthy, but in actual fact reviews like this confirmed the status of Boyack as an up and coming Australian realist talent. As early as 1990, the one time Angry Penguin, Barrett Reid, described one of Boyack's now lost stories 'The Clocktower Man' as "arresting" and in a letter to Boyack predicted bigger and better things for him.

These works brought both critical acclaim and scorn to Boyack who was stopped in Melbourne streets for book signings on occasion. The result was the breaking of ground for a silent underground which had gone unnoticed by the major trend scouts in Australian publishing houses. They weren't out of the picture for long however, as this was the start of "Grunge" and included authors like Neil Boyack, Eric Dando, Simon Colvey, Edward Berridge, Edwina Preston, Moira Burke, and to a great extent Christos Tsiolkas. Reading evenings were packed with heads interested in something new that had spawned from Boyack's self publishing exploits. There was even one night where a young woman slammed the stage with her fists demanding Boyack get up and read before time—a bemused Kieran Carrol, MC'ing with mic in hand was left stunned. Here Simon Colvey should not go unmentioned, he co-authored Boyack's three works to date and both Boyack and Colvey engineered much of this Grunge movement. The styles of Boyack and Colvey differed wonderfully and the package as a whole offered readers and writers alike great insights into contemporary Australian literature, as well as highlighting a tyranny of acceptance which pervades much Australian literature up to the present day.

Boyack's new collection Transactions maintains the rage an grit of the Grunge days, but Boyack has honed his word skills to a point where his stories delve many levels. His authority and restraint are easy and his settings are pivotal. River camps, Koori girls, housing estates, Crown casino, life in the bank. Being set in sometimes plain and desolate Australian landscapes Boyack succesfully articulates the grey areas in life we may have experienced but cannot or will not put into words. Many Australian writers seem to concentrate on trickery or fireworks to cover up the lack of depth in their writing, whereas Boyack's realism articulates his position as an artist and achieves effective communication through sharp and barren imagery. His characters are concerned primarily with work, as most people are.

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