Biography
I was born in Norfolk, England in 1971, and spent the first fifteen or so years of my life in what was, at the time, a relative backwater. At the age of ten I decided I would become a naturalist, and that I would spend my life studying dugong but dugong being in short supply in Norfolk, I eventually gave up on this and decided that I would become a painter instead.
After finishing school, I travelled and taught in Pakistan, and then returned to the UK to study for a degree in fine art and art history in Newcastle. It was whilst in Newcastle that I developed an interest in anthropology, and after graduating from my degree, I was awarded a scholarship to travel to the Tanimbar islands in Indonesia, where I undertook research into indigenous traditions and economies of art. The Tanimbar islands were rich in stories (some of them featuring, pleasingly, the occasional dugong); and perhaps it is no surprise that it was in Indonesia, one rainy afternoon, as I sat in front of a battered old manual typewriter, that I started to write fiction seriously.
I returned from Indonesia and studied for a masters degree in anthropology at Durham, graduating in 1997. I spent the next few years living in various Buddhist communities and writing, whilst living on a shoestring. It was this that led – it’s a long and somewhat tangled tale involving a bookshop in South Shields, a weighty tome by Heidegger and a great many long conversations with philosophically-inclinded friends – to my study of philosophy. In 2002, I enrolled on a PhD in philosophy at Staffordshire University, whilst working as a freelance writer, workshop leader and meditation teacher.
My PhD in philosophy, which explored amongst other things ethics, storytelling and the curious ways of obscure Indonesian gods, was completed in 2007. Meanwhile, my first novel, which drew heavily on my experience in Indonesia, was published by Tindal Street Press, and I was working on various literary projects and residencies. The PhD eventually saw the light of day in 2009 in somewhat more elegant form (PhDs being inelegant beasts by nature) as Finding Our Sea-Legs, published by Kingston University Press.
These days, I am senior lecturer in creative writing at De Montfort University in Leicester. I’m working on various literary and philosophical projects (find out more on my writing and research pages), trying to convince creative writing students that Aristotle is fun, and continuing to explore the places where stories meet philosophy, and where it seems that the question “what does it mean to be at human?” is at stake.
About this site.
This site is made with textpattern. The header image comes from the Song dynasty artist, Ma Yuan, and is used courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
