Paul Davenport

Paul Davenport

Paul is from the little town of Houlton, Maine, where he grew up in a time when there were fewer ‘distractions’ like computer games, chat rooms, cell phones, text messaging, etc. He spent a lot of quality time fishing, playing sports (basketball, baseball, tennis), making music (alto sax) and generally having a good time. Many of these experiences, stored as ‘mental videos’, have been weaved into his writing.  Recurrent themes of his stories are the great outdoors, sports and music.

After completing graduate studies, Paul moved to Germany and began teaching school. From the start of his over thirty-year teaching career (English, Religion), Paul gathered experience as an author, writing for his students. He began by writing plays. Every year, in the final weeks of the school year, he wrote one or more plays for his English classes to perform. Meanwhile, he was a prolific author of teaching material for English teaching journals, specializing in literary subjects and creative writing.

His writing career really took off when one of his plays (‘The Royal Choice’) was published in 1996. After that, he began writing graded school readers for various publishers (Alinea ‘Teen Readers’, Helbling, Klett, and Cornelsen). So far twelve of his readers have been published.

A highlight in his writing career was the choice of his story ‘Crossroads to Love’ as a finalist in the Extensive Reading Foundation’s competition for reader of the year 2007. A year later came an even brighter highlight: his ‘Horror Trip on the Pecos River’ was named reader of the year 2008 in the same competition!

Paul enjoys writing, but he also enjoys actively promoting his books by going to schools and talking with teachers and students.

Paul’s current hobbies include reading (mainly modern novels), table tennis and fly fishing. He sometimes misses the good trout fishing in Maine. He lives with his wife in Lingen (Ems).