Paul McDonald (born 1961 in Walsall) is a British academic, comic novelist, and poet.[1] He teaches English and American Literature at the University of Wolverhampton, where he also runs the Creative and Professional Writing Programme.
He left school at 16 and began work as a saddlemaker, an occupation that provides the backdrop for his first novel, Surviving Sting (2001).[2] After a period studying with the Open University, McDonald entered full-time education at Birmingham Polytechnic, where he began writing fiction, initially producing stories for the women's romance market under a female pseudonym.[3] He later won a scholarship to research a PhD, and in 1994 took an academic post teaching American literature at the University of Wolverhampton.[4]
His second novel, Kiss Me Softly, Amy Turtle (2004) is a comic mystery satirising the Midlands town of Walsall,[5][6][7] while his third, Do I Love You? (2008), takes Northern Soul as its theme.[8][9] His poetry began appearing in the early 1990s and embraces a range of themes and styles. Again humour is a feature, as is surrealism, but he also writes serious love poetry, and verse about art and travel. His most recent collections are Catch a Falling Tortoise (2007) and An Artist Goes Bananas (2012).[10] McDonald's poetry has won several prizes, including the 2012 John Clare Prize.[11] His academic writing includes books on Philip Roth, Joseph Heller, the fiction of The Black Country, and humour.[12][13]
As a humour specialist, McDonald has made several TV appearances, including on BBC Breakfast and The One Show, and he is credited with identifying the oldest joke in the world.[14][15][16] He discusses the latter, and some of the ideas contained in his book The Philosophy of Humour with Michael Grade in the BBC documentary Michael Grade & The World's Oldest Joke.[17]
Bibliography
Poetry
The Right Suggestion (1999)
Catch a Falling Tortoise (2007)
An Artist Goes Bananas (2012)
Rimbaud's Hair (2017)
Novels
Surviving Sting (2001)
Kiss Me Softly, Amy Turtle (2004)
Do I Love You? (2008)
Criticism
Fiction from the Furnace (2002)
Students Guide to Philip Roth (2003)
Laughing at the Darkness (2011)
Reading Catch-22 (2012)
Reading Toni Morrison's Beloved (2013)
Storytelling (2014)
Philip Roth Through the Lens of Kepesh (2016)
The Enigmas of Confinement (2018)
Lydia Davis: A Study (2019)
Allen Ginsberg:Cosmopolitan Comic (2020)
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Humour (2013)
As editor
Loffing Matters (2006)
The Tipping Point (2012)
References
^Literary Heritage West Midlands Author Unnamed, page entry 2002. "Tindal Street Press". Archived from the original on 28 July 2012. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
