Hugh Cook was born in Essex, England, in 1956, but was educated in New Zealand. Over the course of twenty years or so he completed a BA degree at the University of uckland with a double major in English (literature and some linguistics) and Japanese (language and some literature and a little linguistics).

He was a professional writer from about 1986 through 1992 but now lives in Japan where he teaches English and does curriculum development work (writing courses on how to write e-mail, for example). He has also lately begun to blog on his website.

Someone growing up in New Zealand gets a sightly odd cultural perspective. Of course, New Zealand is the local norm, but it's impossible not to be aware of competing norms in Britain and the United States, the main sources of the novels, movies and TV programs consumed in New Zealand.

This writer's cultural perspectives have been further complicated by his traveling, which have taken him to countries as diverse as France and Nepal, the United States and Vietnam. He has accepted Islamic hospitality in Morocco, has been invited into a Hindu home in India, has participated in a festival in a village in the Solomon Islands, and has drunk sacramental sake at a Shinto shrine in Japan on New Year's Day.

Biography provided by the author, December 2002.