Paul Watkins

The eleventh occupant of the Harold Keables Chair comes to Iolani from New Jersey where he is writer in residence at Peddie School and visiting scholar at the Lawrenceville School.

In addition to teaching writing, Paul Watkins is himself a prolific and highly regarded writer.  His sixth novel, The Story of My Disappearance, is winning praise.  Mr. Watkins has twice been short listed for the Booker Prize, for Night Over Day Over Night in 1989 and for The Promise of Light in 1992.  He has received the Holtsby Prize from the Royal Society of Literature for Archangel in 1996 and the Encore prize for best second novel for Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn in 1989.  Hallmark Hall of Fame produced the latter for television in 1996.

Mr. Watkins is an empirical writer, one who gains knowledge through experience before he commits words to paper.  He hiked 400 miles through the Rhineland for Night Over Day Over Night and spent six weeks in the Moroccan Sahara researching In the Blue Light of African Dreams.  Mr. Watkins attended the Dragon School and Eton, experiences which he incorporated in his memoir, Stand Before Your God.  He received a B.A. in Modern Languages from Yale University in 1986 and was a graduate fellow at the Syracuse University Creative Writing program from 1986-1988.