Wistful Nomad: someone constantly on the move, searching for new horizons, yet always with a reflective and introspective gaze.

My name is Paul Crask. I’m from England and I’ve been living and working in Dominica since 2005. I’ve written countless travel and culture articles for international and regional publications, I’ve authored four editions of two Bradt guidebooks, and I’ve produced over a dozen independent magazines, including Dominica Traveller, Dominica Geographic, and Gade Mwen.

In 2024, after almost 20 years of exploring, writing about, and promoting Dominica, I decided to step away from travel and tourism work and focus instead on cultural journalism.

I’ve taken up art, sketching conceptual, imagined urban landscapes in ink and watercolour. I’m really enjoying the process as well as learning about art and art history through books and travels.

On the subject of travel, I still have an insatiable appetite for it (destinations now driven by art galleries, museums, and gardens). I’m a keen gardener (I’ve written several articles for Hortus gardening journal), and I cultivate and roast my own arabica coffee.

I’ve spent a lot of my life on the move. I grew up in the north of England; first Lincolnshire, then Lancashire, and finally Yorkshire. As a teenager, I was really into sport, captaining the high school rugby and village football teams. My parents were hard-working, loving and generous, taking my brother and I on annual summer holidays to France and somehow always finding the money to pay for me to go on school trips abroad. In 1988, I graduated from the University of Leeds with an honours degree in German Language and Literature. At university, I worked as a journalist for the award-winning Leeds Student newspaper, writing film and theatre reviews. I also studied behind the iron curtain at the former Karl Marx University of Leipzig in what used to be East Germany, where I was followed everywhere by the secret police (Stasi). In addition to ten years as a legaltech project manager in London, I’ve also lived and worked in Germany (one year as a teacher) and Japan (two years as a teacher).

I’m rather introverted and find social events difficult. My happy places are in the garden, the forest, and walking the streets of my favourite cities, enjoying galleries, markets, green spaces, and architecture. Although Dominica has become my home, and I have dual citizenship, I still consider myself a nomadic Englishman. I’m just a visitor here.

Email: paulcrask@gmail.com

Instagram: @paulcrask