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'The job of becoming a writer'

30 June 2003

'Why did I become a writer? I can't really come up with any antecedent for it. I'm certainly not from the classic unhappy childhood. I was a student and then I knocked around a bit and then I knuckled down to the job of writing and eventually got published and here I am at novel number whatever it is. There is not much more to it.'

Graham Swift, winner of the Booker Prize with Last Orders, whose most recent novel is The Light of Day, in a profile in the Guardian.