I'm a novelist, journalist, nonfiction writer, with a theatre adaptation of my first novel (Hinterland), currently touring internationally as 'Flight'. I've given workshops to creative writers from backgrounds as diverse as the homeless in London to students of New York University in Abu Dhabi.

With a background as a foreign correspondent in Latin America and Europe for Reuters and the New York Times, my fiction often draws heavily upon lived events - whether contemporary or historical; my teaching interests include approaches to researching and writing both.

I am passionate about using short stories by brilliant writers to convey the excitement of, and possibilities for, students of fiction, using them as a platform for understanding matters from point-of-view and structure to believable character development.

Having spent many years as a reporter in high-quality news organisations, I have experienced from the inside the painstaking processes of establishing facts and communicating news, and am happy teach students what goes into breaking a story, whether in urgent news flashes or long-form features.

Though I currently live in London, my first novel was published when I was still working as a journalist in Paris. 'Hinterland' (Bloomsbury) charts the journey of two Afghan boys on the backroads of Europe as they try to reach London, and grew out of my front page news stories for The New York Times.

My second novel, 'The Memory Stones', is a quest for a missing child who doesn't want to be found, having been brought up with another identity entirely. Inspired by an interview I conducted in Mexico City, it draws on the experience of some 500 children who were stolen during Argentina's dirty war in the 1970s.

Passionate about the environment, I am working on a new novel with an ecological theme that is spurred by the conflict between nature and human nature. I have also received a grant to research a fourth on the early contact period in Australia.

I am the author of a nonfiction work, 'War and Photography' (Routledge), an examination of the modern use of war photographs, which is now a university text.

My teaching experience includes several years as a Royal Literary Fund fellow in London, mentoring students who are keen to improve their writing processes. I have also conducted creative-writing workshops with medical students making sense of their experiences in hospitals; have taught documentary fiction to creative writing students at New York University in Abu Dhabi; and conducted workshops on creative writing techniques and processes from Edinburgh to Auckland to Madrid.

I can also speak to the experience of adaptation as my work has crossed from journalism to fiction and from fiction to the stage.

I am particularly interested in how the online learning experience can be turned to advantage in the field of creative writing, for students of all ages.

I recently participated in the second virtual edition of a three-day training programme for creative writing teachers, offered by the European Association of Creative Writing Programmes.

I currently mentor students as a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund connected to Cranfield University, and previously to the University of Westminster at its Cavendish St campus and its Harrow School of Art, Design and Visual Culture.

Before that I was a staff reporter and editor with the International New York Times and Reuters, working in various countries in Latin America and Europe, based chiefly in Mexico City and France.

I have been a literature fellow at Hawthornden Castle near Edinburgh; the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy; at Cove Park, near Helensburgh, Scotland; at Sangam House in Bangalore, India; and at Writers OMI in New York state. I was also the British Council's Shakespeare-Cervantes Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Madrid.

My novels include 'Hinterland' and 'The Memory Stones' (both Bloomsbury), and the nonfiction work 'War and Photography' (Routledge).