A Brief Biography of Martin Goodman

Martin Goodman was born in Leicester, England, on December 28th 1956, and in the 1960s he was already a regular summer visitor to the Tangiers of Paul Bowles. He left school to take a sales job in Berlin, crossing the wall for visits with friends in the East at weekends. He has worked in China, Saudi Arabia, Italy, the Netherlands, Thailand and Qatar; founded Scotland's premier video publishing business; toured as a professional actor; worked bars as an organist and pianist; and run a mobile music sales exhibition. A pilgrim to many of the sacred places around the globe, he has also walked through civil war zones of Eastern Turkey and Sri Lanka, smoked hashish with bandits in East Bengal, taken psychedelics with Amazonian shamans, and visited remote refugee camps and relief projects. An early memory was helping his father smuggle a gold watch past Franco's guards, on one of regular runs between Tangiers, Gibraltar and Spain. He was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and teaches creative writing at Plymouth University.

Martin Goodman has been shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize, awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary, Travel Awards from the Scottish Arts Council and the Society of Authors, A Royal Literary Fund Award, the Pen is a Mighty Sword international playwriting prize, and an Authors Foundation Award. His journalism appears in The Scotsman, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Observer, the guardian, The Independent etc.