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Location: Malaysia

Member Since: Nov. 17, 2013

Martin Stevenson

Biography

Originally from Cambridge, England, I am a journalist, freelance travel writer, author of ‘More than footprints - How backpacking lost its way, and editor of its sister site morethanfootprints.com’.

Following a war of attrition between several gap-years and a degree in South Asian Studies and Comparative Religion at the School of Oriental and African Studies, I worked in financial public relations in London and taught MBA courses at ESSEC business school in Paris. I have spent the last three years in Southeast Asia researching and writing ‘More than footprints: How backpacking lost its way’. I plan to head back to England the moment it stops raining.

Smashwords Interview

Why is ‘being drunk’ important to you?

I think I was 13 or 14 when I first read Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’. In it Arthur Dent asks about the experience of travelling through hyperspace. Ford Prefect tells him: ‘It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.’
“What’s so wrong about being drunk?”
“Ask a glass of water.”
I didn’t know the difference between an adjective and a passive verb at the time (I don’t think I’d even been drunk), but I remember being awe-struck, and it was my first inkling of what you can make language do.

When did you start writing?

In my twenties I got into the movies of Hal Hartley and wrote lots of short screenplays featuring that terse (annoyingly self-aware) language. Then I studied philosophy and my sentences suddenly became half a page long. Fortunately my first work in journalism (and Harold Evans’ ‘Essential English’) cured me of that, though I still think a well-constructed half-page of relative clauses, even if it owes more to architecture than writing, is a thing of beauty.

Where to find Martin Stevenson online

Website: http://www.morethanfootprints.com
Twitter: @Britabroad
Facebook: Facebook profile
LinkedIn: http://my.linkedin.com/pub/martin-stevenson/2/9b1/456/
Wattpad: MartinStevenson
Blog: http://www.morethanfootprints.com/the-blog.html

Books

This member has not published any books.