Greg Forrester

Greg Forrester

Greg Forrester was born and raised in County Durham, and currently lives in the North East. After initially wanting to be a teacher, Greg changed his mind and decided to study Creative Writing, at both the University of Sunderland (undergraduate) and Newcastle University (postgraduate).

Greg started writing in secondary school, producing four chapters of a clear Lord of the Rings rip-off, that, ‘thankfully’, no longer exists. Since then, his writing has been greatly influenced by his favourite books – from One Hundred Years of Solitude to His Dark Materials, from Skellig to The Shadow of the Wind. Currently, Greg writes magical realism stories built from his own experiences of how he sees the world.

 

Q: If you could travel in the past, which one of the great writers would you like to meet and why?

A: Possibly not that far into the past, but I’d love to meet Gabriel Garcia Marquez. As a magical realist writer, the opportunity to speak to the man central to its global rise would be a dream come true.

 

Q: Do you have a favourite quote? (from a book, movie, song, speech…)

A: I love quotes – my friends tell me it’s all I post on Facebook – but my favourites are ‘I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees’ by Pablo Neruda, and ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 

Q: If you could teleport yourself anywhere, real or fictional, where would it be and why?

A: Yubaba’s bathhouse from Spirited Away