I'm from Oakland and San Francisco, so I feel like the Pacific Northwest starts there and goes north - so, it's home to me.
I was a mixture of a country boy and a town boy, really. Chichester is a town on the coast of England, and I grew up all along that strip of coast that Chichester branches out into. Sometimes I was living in a house in the country, and sometimes I was living in a town.
I'm from a small town on the bottom edge of Mississippi, very near New Orleans and the Louisiana border. My family has lived there for generations.
I was brought up in a flat in North London - virtually the last building in London, because north of us was countryside all the way to the coast, and south of us was non-stop London for 20 miles.
I'm from the gulf coast of Louisiana.
Cornwall bears a certain resemblance to Italy: each is like a leg or boot, but Italy stands a-tiptoe to the south, whereas Cornwall is thrust out to the west. But, whereas Italy is kicking Sicily as a football, Cornwall has but the shattered group of the Scilly Isles at its toe.
Vancouver is a beautiful area, I don't care what time of the year you're there. Vancouver and Calgary. Great places in Canada.
One of my favorite places is Seattle. Growing up, I never thought I'd be able to go to Seattle. I grew up in eastern South Carolina, so that's as far as you can get from Seattle, unless I lived in Miami.
I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.
Big Sur is at the end of the continent. It attracts really crazy people.
It's always great to visit Taranaki; it's beautiful, and I've caught some great waves there.
California is a great place to live if you're an orange.
It's a very defined area, Newfoundland. It's an island - Labrador is a huge empty space. It's a very defined area with a very few number of people.
An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed.
I grew up in the Northeast; I've seen hurricanes before and trees down and cars destroyed.
I suppose more than anything, it's the way of life in this part of the country that influences my writing. In Eastern North Carolina, with the exception of Wilmington, most people live in small towns.
The Pacific Northwest, and particularly Whidbey Island, is extremely suited to be a location in a novel.
I was 15 when Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998. At the time, I lived in Vargas State, which borders the Caribbean. In 1999, torrential rains caused flash floods that left thousands of people dead. I lost several friends, and my school was buried in the mudslide. The importance of resilience has been etched into my soul ever since.
I'm a Goan girl.
The BP settlement is good for Alabama, particularly Alabama's coastal region.
I love the Mediterranean for the fact that winter is over in a minute, and the almond blossom arrives in January.
I love going to the Algarve and playing golf.
After my grandfather's plane took enemy fire, he was denied permission to land at the first available airstrip. In that classic British bureaucratic way, they said he had to go back to your own airbase in the Midlands. They crashed between the coast and the airfield.
Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.
The West Coast is so different from the common perceptions of it.
