Paul Letters asked Paul Letters:

How did you get started writing?

Paul Letters In 2008 I was on holiday in Crete and couldn’t get to sleep one night. Ideas for a novel had been pinballing around the back of my head for years, but at 2am that night the beginnings of a plot – inspired by my grandmother’s escape across Europe in 1939-40 – poured out onto the page. I had recorded an interview with her about a decade earlier; I hadn’t looked at it for years, but I guess at some level I had long-intended to do something with it. Although I took a year off teaching, a combination of my baby son, a Masters’ Degree and a job as a university researcher all competed with the would-be novel for my time.

My first published and paid article was a 2010 travel story about a date with Alicia at the Umbrian Jazz Festival (http://paulletters.com/umbria-jazz-fe...). My op-eds include Orwell’s prediction of the current rise of China (http://paulletters.com/the-cold-war-c...), to taking on academics who avow that the world in 2014 resembles 1914 (http://paulletters.com/2014-is-not-1914/).

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