ALAN WHELAN

Can hold his breath for 97 seconds.
It’s harder than it seems.

Here’s where writers say they’ve knocked around a bit. So Alan Whelan says, truthfully, he’s been a probation officer, a house painter, a tenants’ union organizer, factory worker, a political activist, sexual therapist, builder’s laborer, PR hack, farmhand, writer, editor, and researcher. He’s driven forklifts in a fruit market and written policy and legislation for governments. He once had a job sexing chickens, which is less criminal than it sounds.

He believes in clarity. He is not “in love with words”. If you read one of his sentences and you don’t know what it means, or a page and you don’t know what just happened. It means he’s written it badly.

A principle: the struggle between people who mean well and are trying to do the right thing is more real, also more interesting, than struggles between “good” and “evil”.