My name is Martin Surridge. My middle name is Gideon. I left North London for California when I was 13 years old. I am a freelance writer living, working, and going to school in College Place, WA, just outside Walla Walla, and I am currently a graduate student working on my M.A. in Teaching at Walla Walla University. I graduated with a B.S. in Social Studies and a minor in English Literature from Pacific Union College in Northern California, where I was editor of The Campus Chronicle, the school’s biweekly newspaper, for a year and also an officer for three years in the college’s Amnesty International chapter. College also gave me several other amazing opportunities to mature as a person and as a writer. I covered world cup soccer for a small weekly newspaper in the Napa Valley, wrote research papers on topics ranging from African-American history to Victorian poetry, and read several of my poems at open-mic events and charity fundraisers. I subsequently threw the poetry in the trash where it belonged. marquee hire