Pete Carvill (1981 - ?)

Recently, as part of an application process for a grant to write a longform travel article, I was asked to write a bio. In an effort to be more creative, I wrote it like an obituary. Deciding it should not just be relegated to that application process, I am posting it here, too, with some minor edits, nips, and tucks.

Here we have Pete Carvill, whose mastery of the written word was unfortunately counterbalanced throughout his life by the inability to thrive within a corporate environment.

He was born just over forty years ago in the British town of Runcorn, a place often named the worst—or, in its better years—the second-worst place to live in the UK. That, Pete came to believe, was somewhat unfair, and while he was never ashamed of his hometown, he doubts it would ever say the same about him.

Coming from Runcorn gave the young Carvill the impetus to head out into the wide world with the determination to stay there. He left home at nineteen and went to university on the opposite side of the country where he spent three years studying literature while falling in love with the things beginning with ‘b’ that set the course of his life: boxing, books, bikes, bars, brawls, and broads.

He read a lot, some of it related to his degree, and set off on a life influenced by the likes of Hauser, McIlvanney, Beattie, Plimpton, and Baldwin (and other writers nobody has heard of). As he later wrote for Litro in ‘Among the Lonely People’, “I glanced through the three years of my formal education, and it largely passed through me without touching the sides.”

He spent a year working after his degree and began to believe that literature in a formal setting had more to unveil to him, so went to study at the University of Sheffield. He scraped through that, bored with talking about writing rather than doing it, and decided after a few dead-end admin roles to live abroad.

He went to Japan in 2006 to teach and write, doing a year’s contract before deciding that 2007 was probably the right time to begin a career in print journalism. After a few torrid months of battering at the industry’s doors, he was hired as an apprentice reporter on a magazine called Cover. He worked his way up from apprentice reporter to reporter over two years, and won or was nominated for a slew of awards. The publication moved in a different direction in 2009, the direction being away from him. Redundant, he took a six-month contract at the FT Group working on FT Adviser, one of its flagship titles.

He left behind Financial Adviser and the UK in 2010 when he moved to Berlin to freelance for a year, while writing his novel. Two days after he came to the German capital, he was approached about a full-time role as a chief reporter on a major B2B paper. He turned it down on the grounds that at some point in life everyone needs to make the biggest mistake of their professional career.

The scuttlebutt at the beginning of his career was that this was someone that would do well. However, he has consistently defied expectations and done exactly the opposite.

His temporary freelancing, which began in 2009, has now lasted until… now. In that time, he has worked, when circumstances demanded, as a computer programmer, as a PR, and as a teacher. He also married one Canadian, fathered two others, wrote three books (none of which have yet been published), shepherded his small children through two years of a global pandemic, and carved out a ongoing niche in freelance writing.

Between 2012 and 2016, he worked as editor and assigning editor for Associated Reporters Abroad, which was based in Berlin. There, he worked with reporters around the globe on putting together longform stories and breaking news for titles such as USA Today, The Washington Times, The Globe and Mail, and the New York Post. In 2014, he worked on a story about Copenhagen Zoo killing a giraffe and the zoo still holds that grudge.

Nowadays, he writes for the magazines Funds Europe, Pensions Age, Intelligent Insurer, Public Finance, Litro, Slow Travel Berlin, NY Fights, Boxing News, European Pensions, and Transform. He puts together five stories a week—three news and two analyses—for the website Expert investor, and he also planned, oversaw, and edited the Legal Dialogue Playbook on behalf of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum, writing half the articles. He’s also the editor of Property Wire.

When not working, he is usually at a hockey game or an arena somewhere.