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.
For a long time I wanted to pursue career journalism, but realized it was secondary to my love of teaching and a desire to work with high school kids. After deciding that I wanted to teach English and social studies, it became clear that my experience in collegiate and freelance journalism would serve me well in the professional world, and, I hope to teach journalism to students sometime in the future.
As illustrated by this online portfolio, I am still quite active in journalism and professional writing. I have recently been published in The Gleaner, a religious journal for Seventh-day Adventists in the Pacific Northwest, and I am currently writing for ReligiousLiberty.TV, Positive Life Radio, Walla Walla University and their student newspaper The Collegian, and the Walla Walla Valley’s daily newspaper The Union-Bulletin. I also write for The Marquee, the weekly entertainment insert for The Union Bulletin. Along with weekly news pieces for newspapers, I frequently write press releases, newsletters, editorials and opinion articles, religious devotional pieces, essays, and poetry for my other employers and occasionally for my own interest. In the last few months, I have had two series of columns published in The Union Bulletin, the first of which focused on my experiences as a summer camp counselor in North Idaho, and the second told the story of my childhood move from England to the United States.
The purpose of this site is threefold. Firstly, I hope to display my work to any current, or future employers who wish to hire me as a writer. Secondly, the portfolio of my published work is a useful organizational tool for me and my colleagues. Finally, my mother and grandmother may occasionally wish to read my work and I shall direct them here.
