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Tuesday 5 June 2012

Interview @ www.gmcknight.com

Gina's Interview Series: Famous People From Around the World

By Gina McKnight, blogger

Journalist Richard Carreño

Richard Carreño

Richard Carreño resides in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA...........
a writer, bookseller, and an educator, formerly a lecturer of American literature and English composition at several universities in the United Kingdom and in the United States. He is editor of The Philadelphia Junto and a partner in the on-line bookshop, @philabooks|booksellers and WritersClearinghousePress. He specializes in art, architectural, and cultural reporting and criticism.


He is the author of several books, including Museum Mile: Philadelphia's Parkway Museums, Lord of Hosts: The Life of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon, and Clotheshorse: A History and Guide to Riding Apparel.

In 1996, Carreño was a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and, in 1998, an educational consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (A.I.D.) in Ukraine. Carreño was based in the late 1990s in London, working as a media consultant, writer, and editor for Writers Clearinghouse, a firm he founded in 1978 in Fabyan, CT. He travelled widely in Europe and the Mid-East. Returning to the United States in 1999, he held a short-term, mid-career assignment as a James H. Ottaway Sr. Fellow at the American Press Institute, Washington.

He is the recipient of an honors citation from the Lowell Mellett Fund for a Free and Responsible Press, Washington, for his work as a media critic; a first place award from the New England Scholastic Press Association; and a Friends of The Bahamas Essay Award, among others.

In 1999, Carreño founded @philabooks|booksellers in partnership with late father, Ralph J. Carreño of Boston. The on-line bookshop specializes in books about The New Yorker and its authors; men's fashions; works by and about the Pennsylvania author John O'Hara; and books by and about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. @philabooks also sponsors The Philadelphia Book ConneXion, a charity that distributes free books.

Carreño was a reporter and editor for many years in the 1970s and 1980s for numerous newspapers, includingThe Boston Globe; The Hartford Courant; the Telegram & Gazette, Worcester, Massachusetts; and The News, Southbridge, Massachusetts, where he served as the first news critic and reader ombudsmen in New England. His free-lance writing has appeared in scores of regional and national publications in the U.S. and in the U.K.

His work now appears regularly in the Philadelphia Weekly Press. He also edits The Philadelphia Junto, an on-line blog.

Among his teaching posts were adjunct positions at Johnson& Wales University, Providence, Rhode Island; the Harvard University Extension School, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Clark University and Assumption College, both in Worcester, Massachusetts; and at the Choate-Rosemary Hall School, Wallingford, Connecticut. In 2004, he was an ESL specialist in Spain.

For many years, Carreño operated a family-owned boarding stable in Connecticut. He is an amateur horsemen, previously participating in foxhunting in Massachusetts and polo in Florida and Massachusetts. His interest in equestrianism extends to book collecting in that area and it being specialty designation of @philabooks. He has amassed a 5,000-title personal library, including a comprehensive collection of works by and about John O'Hara.

Before moving to the U.K., Carreño served as an elected and appointed official to several library panels, including the Connecticut Association of Library Directors; the Connecticut Governor's Conference on Libraries; and the Thompson, CT, Library Board of Directors. He is a member of Pen & Pencil Club, Philadelphia; the Cambridge University Society; and the Mid-Century Society, Philadelphia and London.
Carreño was educated at New York University, where he was a Regent Scholar and studied under the noted historians North Callahan and John Tebbel. He obtained undergraduate degrees from the American University, Paris, France; and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This was followed by graduate work at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Carreño has also worked and lived in France and Switzerland. His childhood home was in Nassau, The Bahamas, where is mother, Marion Berman Carreño, is buried. Carreño is a former resident of Worcester, Massachusetts, and Thompson, Connecticut.....

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
First time I read The New Yorker as a kid.
What is your genre and writing style?
Advocacy first-person journalism. Informal.

Where do you like to write?

In my office.

How do you maintain ideas and thoughts for manuscripts?
Files, Notebooks.

In your opinion, what makes a great writer?
Non-fiction: Kick-Ass Cheeky Honesty Fiction: Universal Timeless Theme.

What suggestions do you have for first time writers?

Write, proofread, cut, edit, write and do it again an again.

Do you have a favorite author/poet?

Author: John O'Hara

What are you currently working on?

A biography of Paul Mellon.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Whoa! One day at a time, please

Follow Richard

The J U N T O depends exclusively on reader support. Please help us continue by contributing directly via PayPal, or by contributing editorial content via Writers.Clearinghouse@comcast.net. Empowered by Writers Clearinghouse | S.P.Q.R. 1976 Richard Carreño, Editor