Paul McDonald

Paul McDonald
Paul McDonald, Writer
Born	Walsall
Nationality	English
Known for	Writer and Academic

Paul McDonald (Writer) born 1961 in Walsall is a British academic, comic novelist, and poet.^[1] He teaches English and American Literature at the University of Wolverhampton, where he also runs the Creative and Professional Writing Programme. He left school at 16 and began work as a saddlemaker, an occupation that provides the backdrop for his first novel, Surviving Sting (2001).^[2] After a period studying with the Open University, McDonald entered fulltime education at Birmingham Polytechnic where he began writing fiction, initially producing stories for the women’s romance market under a female pseudonym.^[3] He later won a scholarship to research a PhD, and in 1994 took an academic post teaching American literature at the University of Wolverhampton.^[4] His second novel, Kiss Me Softly, Amy Turtle (2004) is a comic mystery satirising the Midlands town of Walsall,^[5][6][7] while his third, Do I Love You? (2008), takes Northern Soul as its theme.^[8][9] His poetry began appearing in the early 1990s and embraces a range of themes and styles. Again humour is a feature, as is surrealism, but he also writes serious love poetry, and verse about art and travel. His most recent collections are Catch a Falling Tortoise (2007) and An Artist Goes Bananas (2012).^[10] His academic writing includes books on Philip Roth, Joseph Heller, the fiction of The Black Country, and humour.^[11][12] As a humour specialist he has made several TV appearances, including BBC Breakfast and The One Show, and he is credited with identifying the oldest joke in the world. ^[13][14][15]

Bibliography

Poetry

• The Right Suggestion (1999)
• Catch a Falling Tortoise (2007)
• An Artist Goes Bananas (2012)

Novels

• Surviving Sting (2001)
• Kiss Me Softly, Amy Turtle (2004)
• Do I Love You? (2008)

Criticism

• Fiction from the Furnace (2002)
• Students Guide to Philip Roth (2003)
• Laughing at the Darkness (2011)
• Reading Catch-22 (2012)

As Editor

• Loffing Matters (2006)
• The Tipping Point (2012)

References

External links

• Publisher's Website (fiction) [2]
• Publisher's Website (poetry) [3]
• University of Wolverhampton Staff Page [4]
• An Independent on Sunday article in which Paul McDonald discusses humour [5]
• A Birmingham Post article in which Paul McDonald gives advice on how to write humour. [6]