A Britican: A British American, or American Brit - a citizen of both countries with an invested interest in the politics and culture of each.

I’m a journalist, in my mid-20’s. Currently, I'm a news writer in Malibu, California.

Born in the U.K., my interests are politics, film, literature, music and studying the zeitgeist. I’m an absolute information junkie, devouring books, magazines, and newspapers but not to the point of missing out on experiencing real life. After all, real life is where one can meet real people and gain real wisdom and perspective.

I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. Since then I’ve traveled, spent time working for the Halifax Bank of Scotland, studied at the London School of Journalism, and moved to California to work in Malibu.

My father is a Scouser, born in Liverpool during The War; he still complains that he didn’t get to eat sweets (or ‘candy’ as my mother would say) until he was a teenager thanks to rationing.

My mother was born in California but spent her teenage years in Vermont and so calls herself a New Englander - which is crazy as everyone knows California is way sexier. (Note: I asked her why she won’t call herself a Californian - she says it’s because she gets annoyed when, after calling herself a Californian to a Brit, she gets asked, ‘What are you doing over here then?!’. Apparently New England doesn’t elicit much of a response.)

I have one younger brother (see below). He’s probably smarter than me, a funnier writer than me, and he got the tall, blonde, skinny, tanned genes. Despite this I don’t hate him and in fact am rather fond of him, especially when he shares his popcorn.

 

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Random fact: I have an irrational addiction to magazines and newspapers and hate to throw them out, even the ones that are five years old. I live in fear of throwing out a vital, unread article that might change my life. In fact, I have permanent readers’ guilt.

Pet hates: Rampant anti-Americanism. I admit this may be because I have an invested interest in America but it grates every time a pompous Brit calls my second home a ‘land of idiots’. Don’t blame the whole nation for one man. And by one man, I mean Homer Simpson. That yellow fatso isn’t a fair representation of the rest of the country, y’all. So to all judgmental Brits out there: turn off your television - which I bet you probably use to watch mostly American shows - and go visit the land of SoCo, cowboys, and strippers before being so critical!

Strangest moment: When Ewan Macgregor sang Happy Birthday to me in front of 300 people at London’s National Film Theatre in 2002.

Favourite place in the world: Having not visited the whole world, I’m going to pick my favourite so far, which is the entire Californian coastline. It’s also hard to beat a good drive in the English countryside on deathly narrow roads lined with hedgerows, passing tiny gingerbread cottages filled with tiny gingerbread people.

Favourite film of all time: The Wizard of Oz; I’ve seen this so many times. I loved it as a kid because of the shoes - I wanted a pair so badly. They were like pornography for feet. They would appear in my dreams by night and by day I would wear my dull, normal shoes and feel sad. I saw the real things in the Smithsonian and they were faded. What a great metaphor for childhood, eh?

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Writing is something that’s always come naturally to me. I’d wanted to be a lawyer, an actress, a film director… But when finishing up with uni and figuring out what I actually should do with my life, two childhood memories stuck out that pointed me in the direction of writing as a career.  When I was seven or eight I was a pupil at a quaint little village school in Buckinghamshire, England. I had a teacher who I thought didn’t like me much – perhaps because I was a smart alec with an answer for everything – and so I always wanted to impress him to prove myself. One week we had an assignment to do that I’d forgotten about – a book review. I hadn’t read anything that week. But I couldn’t admit that to Mr Donald! I wanted him to think I was as smart as my mouth. So I sat down and wrote a review of a book that didn’t exist. I came up with a title, a plot, the characters; I even did a drawing of a scene from it. And I got top marks. He said I’d really brought that book to life for him. Maybe he figured it out… But I don’t think so. And when thinking back on that I realized I must have the creative gene in me. Or maybe just a pathological fear of failure.

The second incident was when I was 11. I was into making little magazines of my own, to distribute to friends. I wanted interviews in the magazine, something to make it more than just a collection of my stories and quizzes. So I called up an eating disorders centre in town and asked for an interview with the manager, and I called the local newspaper and asked to interview the editor. And bless their hearts they both obliged. They took time out from their busy days to talk to a kid who just wanted to do her own little magazine. I thought that was so kind of them, and it taught me in retrospect that maybe I have the guts to be a journalist. I worry I’ve lost some of my nerve with old age, but just the memory of that helps me to keep in mind that I’m probably on the path I’m meant to follow. Plus I really don’t have the patience to study law.

I’ve been published by national newspaper The Independent, London borough weekly paper the Wandsworth Borough News in South London, and the trade newspaper RAF News. I have done internships at the Sunday Telegraph, RAF News, and Wandsworth Borough News. As well as my journalism training in London, I have also been a creative writing student of novelist Sophie King (real name Jane Bidder), with whom an interview about being a writer will appear in September.

My website, which includes articles, opinions, reviews and a contact address, is: http://nuggetoftruth.wordpress.com.

 

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I am a Tampa native, one of the few “true” Floridians (most Floridians are actually imported from cold, northernly places).  Life in Florida has impacted me in ways I never even realized until I travelled elsewhere.  

 For one, I am permanently cold.  After spending two years running cross-country, trekking five miles on steaming asphalt during the hottest part of the Florida afternoon, even seventy-degree weather now makes me shiver.  In addition to a shamefully low tolerance for temperature changes, I have been permanently instilled with a fear of water predators.  There is scarcely a body of water in Florida which does not contain a predator of some sort.  If it’s salt water, there are sharks and sting rays.  If it’s fresh water, there are alligators and cottonmouth snakes.  The predators are everywhere – ocean, lakes, rivers, ponds, even in the sewers – the only safe place is brackish water, and even then, it’s dangerously near the borders of both fresh and salt, and I’ve never been fully convinced that a daring gator wouldn’t try crossing over.   The first time I visited a “safe” body of water (in the mountains of North Carolina), it took the Carolinians nearly two days to convince me that alligators could not possibly be found in a mountain stream. 

Perhaps it is this sense of ever-present wildness (and a bit of danger) that ingrained in me a passion for all things wild, from Tampa’s ground-shaking summer thunderstorms to all types of wild animals.

I’ve been writing stories and poems since nearly as far back as I can remember, but I never envisioned making writing my career.  Writing wasn’t something I’d “do” when I grew up; writing was just something I did.  It was a natural outlet, as much a part of me as my voice or my stubbornly straight brown hair.  In fact, in the same way that my hair returns to straightness no matter how much effort I put in to curl it, writing has always been the medium I returned to whenever I felt the need for expression.

That said, my writing hasn’t always been good.  In fact, “good” was seldom my concern in my early years as a writer.  My drive toward writing came from a desire to create and to be creative, to see my thoughts on the page in new and interesting ways, and to discover new things about myself and about the way I think.

It is an understanding of this desire for creative self-expression which led me (quite unexpectedly) to my current occupation.  Though I currently teach Freshman Composition at a university, and though I have always had a passion for writing, I never intended to teach writing.  In fact, I wanted to be a veterinarian.

Though the events which led me to switch my major from Biology to English are complicated at best, I learned more about myself in my nearly four years in the University of South Florida’s undergraduate Creative Writing program than I ever imagined I could.  I graduated with my BA in English in 2005, and I am now working on my MA in Rhetoric and Composition.  I have taught Freshman Composition at two different colleges, and am currently teaching one course at a local university and working as an editor for an author here in Tampa.

I would love to say that I am not a geek.  Unfortunately, I always have been one.  I used to memorize obscure facts about the gestation periods of peregrine falcons; now I spend my time looking up the etymology of words like “diffident.”  The move from science geek to language geek hasn’t made me any less (or more, I hope) geeky.   What it has accomplished is to show me that, no matter how vast a person’s range of experiences in life, writing is a powerful and expressive outlet which is only strengthened and enriched by the variety of experience that can be channeled into it.

I have been published in The Oracle (USF’s student newspaper), as well as USF’s annual literary magazine, The Omnibus.  My website, which contains advice for writers as well as a few samples of my own writing, is http://writeyourmind.wordpress.com.

 

I am the youngest member of the editorial staff of Calliope, but what I lack in age I make up for in gender superiority, being as I am the only male. Just like my esteemed colleague from the Britican Perspective, I too am a Britican originally from Liverpool, with a Yank for a mum and a Limey for a dad.

 Here are a few random facts about myself (in bullet-pointed form for your convenience!): 

• My favourite band is The Clash, a superb punk/rock group who broke all kinds of musical barriers.
• My favourite movie is possibly Patton. I say possibly, because there are many rivals for that illustrious crown.
• I’m fairly certain I suffer from a mild form of OCD.
• I’m a fan of Liverpool FC. (That’s a football club to any American’s reading. And by ‘football’ I mean ‘soccer’).
• I’ve been told I look a little like Beck. I don’t.
• I studied in Florida for 2 years, and I plan on going back to finish my studies in America.
• I’ve also never been to Spain.

 I have many exciting interests and obsessions. History is my main one. That’s been my favourite subject since as far back as I can remember. I don’t like to consider myself a history geek, but I am. I really am. Anyway, more on that later! Seeing as how I’m merely a faceless being of editing power to most people reading this, I won’t go into all the various things I’m ‘into’, so I’ll just go ahead and use those trusty bullet-points again: 

• Politics.
• Rock music.
• Film.
• Museums. (Yes... I’m ‘into’ museums. Don’t judge me.)

 My intellectual interests are extremely varied and include: History, Military History, Ancient History, Political History, and World History. For some reason I’ve been referred to as a "history buff’ on occasion.

“But Arthur, you intellectual stallion, what good is a history-nut to a writing website?” I hear you ask.

Well, simply put, history is where my expertise is and it’s what I’m pursuing (eventually) as a career. I’ve written in several Blogs over the years and have developed a writing-niche in satire, both political and social, and I plan to continue developing that with the help of this website.

I also plan on connecting my interest in writing with my interest in history with some historical fiction, which I’ll no doubt post on the site… so keep that edge of your seat warm!