Paul Strickland, 54, covers education and does some general-assignment work for The Prince George Citizen, a daily newspaper in north-central British Columbia. He has worked there for fourteen years, and before that he worked nine years for the daily Medicine Hat News in southeastern Alberta. He wrote his M.A. thesis in English literature on "Oscar Wilde and the Inter-relationships among Critic, Artist and Society," and received his master's degree from the University of British Columbia in 1974. He received his M.A. in history from the University of Nevada-Reno in 1980.

He travelled in Spain in the fall and winter of 1976, and became interested in the Spanish poets of the Generation of Ninety-Eight, particularly Antonio Machado. He read translations of Spanish poetry at readings in Other Art Cafe in Prince George in the early 1990s and also at poetry readings in Prince George's Cafe Voltaire in 2001, where he read two or three of his own poems, as well. He has written about eight poems during the past four years, mostly protest poetry. He has been taking classes in ancient Greek (and Hebrew one year) under Dr. Eldon Lee, a retired Prince George physician who teaches classes in classical languages in his own home.

Paul reads widely in philosophy, history, sociology and English, German and Spanish literature. When his newspaper still encouraged them, he wrote book reviews and interviews with poets.

Paul met Lynda Williams through shared connections from her days as a reporter at The Prince George Citizen. A friend of writers and the Okal Rel Universe, and a writer himself, Paul has attended Lynda's readings, met her for breakfast to discuss writerly things, taken pictures when cameras were thrust into his hand, and generally taken the whole writerly gig very seriously. Most recently, he introduced reviewer Anne M. Stickel to the Okal Rel Universe.