Paul Griffin

Paul began writing his first novel as he finished college, in 1988. That novel and many others went unpublished. Meanwhile, he worked on the truck docks and in construction, as a dog trainer and a driver, teacher, tutor, EMT, butler, bartender, waiter, cook and dishwasher (alongside Vin Diesel). The hardest and best work was the teaching. Paul started working with at-risk, incarcerated and special needs teens in 1989, with a concentration in conflict resolution workshops aimed at stemming the spread of violence, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS among young adults. These days his workshops focus on helping young men and women tell their life stories as they reach out to counselors, judges, admissions officers and potential employers. Twenty years to the day after Paul graduated Dartmouth, Penguin/Dial released his “first” (twenty-fourth) novel Ten Mile River and then The Orange Houses a year later. Dial is publishing a third novel, Stay With Me, in the fall of 2011, a fourth, Burning Blue, a mystery, in 2012 and a fifth, tentatively a sci-fi romance, in 2013. Paul lives in Washington Heights, NYC with three dogs and one wife, documentary moviemaker Risa Morimoto.