Robert Reilly

When people ask me what made me want to start writing in the first place, my answer is always quite simple; I wanted to tell a story. When I was a young boy in Dublin, listening to my grandfather tell me stories on those rainy evenings, I was always enthralled by the images of those fantastic places and colourful people that they conjured up. But it wasn’t just the tale itself but the manner in which it was told. My grandfather would employ the tools of the storyteller’s trade, embellishing, misdirecting, sculpting the story as it unfolded to draw me in, bringing it to life and making me part of it. Each time I would ask for a favourite story to be retold, small aspects of it would change, sharpening its edges or softening its focus, a fluid creation, moulded and reshaped by this magician to my wonder and awe. After all, the beauty of a story is not in the details but in the truths that lie just beneath the surface. But then again, a story is just a story.

Robert was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. After an erratic university career which jumped from Physics through French, Art and Business he emerged from the other side with even less of an idea of what the hell he was going to do. Thus commenced many a year of travel and mind-broadening until he finally settled down for a bit in the small town of Antigua, Guatemala. There, he and his friends opened the country’s first Irish Pub, Reilly’s Irish Tavern. After some years, Robert moved to the city of Malmö in Sweden, where he attended university, finally getting a Bachelors Degree in Literature, History and Sociology. He currently resides in Malmö with his beautiful wife, Ingrid and their two dogs, Eddie and Sture.