Carol Connolly (neé McLellan) was born in 1934. In addition to her first career raising seven, Connolly has been variously known as a political candidate, activist, journalist, poet, and playwright. She began writing poetry in 1976 by accident, when the fiction class she wanted to take was full. She signed up for a poetry class instead and published her first collection Payments Due, in 1985. In July 2006, she was named Saint Paul's first poet laureate.