penelope rowlands

I was once the person you see in the photograph on the left -- that is, a small, English child. (I'm actually a lifelong dual national, half American and half British.) I've lived in the U.S. since I was five years old with a couple of stretches spent living in France -- see, eventually, Paris Was Ours, due out in February, 2011. (There's a link to the book's Web site at the bottom of this page.)

Like just about every writer, I think, I read avidly all through childhood. I began writing poetry in high school, moved on to fiction in college and, at some point in my early 30s, turned more or less exclusively and permanently to nonfiction. I read William Shawn's The New Yorker, worshipfully, as I was growing up and was taught repeatedly through its pages that journalistic work could be composed with as much care and art as a short story or novel.

For specifics about my work, please click on the tabs helpfully labelled 'Books' and 'Articles' at the top of this page! (Also, on the titles in the column to the right.) Other twists and turns in my writing life include an unpublished novel, written when I was in my twenties, and stints as a technical copywriter and medical reporter.

For the rest, I should say that I love writing nonfiction for the way it allows me to examine and comment upon -- and, if all goes well, even make sense of -- the world around me. I try to write as honestly as I can and I always learn along the way. I believe in the power of words to illuminate, even as they entertain.

As for the where of it all, after many years away, both in Paris and in California, I've settled back on the East Coast -- at least for the time being -- and now live, quite happily, in the brainy, idyllic town of Princeton, New Jersey.