The Writing Life I owe it all to a man named Elliott Coleman. I grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, and then went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. I was strong in math and science, and I entered Hopkins with vague dreams of becoming an aerospace engineer. (Make way, John Glenn; Chutkow’s on the way!) At Hopkins, though, I found that my entire freshman class was far better at advanced calculus and chemistry than I was, and I moped around the Hopkins campus for most of the spring term. Then I met Elliott Coleman.
		Elliott was a distinguished poet and the head of the Writing Seminars, one of the most prestigious writing programs in America. Tall, silver-haired, and the only man I’ve ever met who actually slapped his knee when he laughed, Elliott saw in me some faint glimmer of writing talent and took me under his wing. The following fall I began working directly under his tutelage, writing fiction in a graduate school seminar and reading American Masters in an independent study program with him, one on one. I was enthralled. By Christmas I had read all of Hemingway, by spring break all of Fitzgerald. I was off and running. I got my B.A. and M.A. in writing and then headed into journalism, at the height of the Vietnam War. From there a long stretch in journalism unfolded. I started with The Baltimore Sun and then worked as a reporter and foreign correspondent with the Associated Press, with postings in Baltimore, AP headquarters in New York, and then in New Delhi and Paris. With my eye on eventually writing books, I left the AP in 1980 and began freelancing from my base in Paris. Throughout the 1980s I wrote for The New York Times, mostly about French film and travel, and I also wrote for Connoisseur Magazine and other top-quality publications. In my spare time, I did TV and radio projects for ABC’s 20-20, CNN, the BBC, and Arianespace, the European commercial satellite consortium. In 1989, I returned with my family to the United States and set up shop in California Wine Country. My focus at that point was clear: to write high-quality profiles and books. For the former, I had the good fortune of finding the ideal venue for my work: Cigar Aficionado magazine, under the inspired direction of Editor Gordon Mott. Gifted, sophisticated, and with an uncanny ability to guide writers, Gordon called on me to write many stories, including in-depth cover stories on John Travolta, Pierce Brosnan, Jeff Bridges, Laurence Fishburne, Gina Gershon, and some little-known guy named Arnold Schwarzenegger. For my book projects, I was equally lucky; I got to work with the best editors in the publishing business: Jonathan Segal at Knopf and Walt Bode at Harcourt. What writer could ask for more? Over the years, one of my greatest joys has been teaching writing. I've taught at universities in Paris, Berkeley, Hayward and Napa, and I've taught courses in everything from advanced journalism to creative writing. But the underlying challenge and joy are always the same: to share with aspiring writers my own passion for the craft and to help them find their way to the soaring pleasure of putting words successfully on paper. In sum, I want to do for them what Elliott Coleman did for me. And the highlight of my life? My two sons: Justin and Ethan. No question about it. Thanks entirely to their mother and their own hard work, they are both fine young men: smart, sensitive, caring, and both of them are gifted teachers, Justin in math, Ethan in French and Spanish. With both grace and forbearance, they manage to put up with their old man and make me proud every single day. And they have taught me a fundamental truth about parenting: fathers learn far more from their sons than the sons learn from their father. Maybe that’s not true in every case, but it is certainly true in mine. Thanks, guys. You make every day a blessing and a gift. -- Paul Chutkow