I’ve lived away from my home country for more than two decades now so I should be well assimilated in my adopted land, a small patch of countryside in Northern Ireland. But there are still things I find strange, amusing or noteworthy about this place. Those who best understand my perspective are other ex-pats, including my fellow writers in Writers Abroad, and I enjoy sharing anecdotes about my life with them. I also have a chance to share my experiences with a wider audience by writing short stories and reminiscences about life in my adopted land. These writings often find their way into Writers Abroad’s yearly anthology.

This year the theme of the book is Foreign Encounters. An encounter can be a chance meeting, a planned get-together or even a confrontation. The anthology is a collection of stories, non-fiction articles and poems featuring a variety of foreign encounters: with family, friends, lovers, animals, cultures, or just with one’s own prejudices and preconceptions.

Foreign Encounters is the third anthology published by Writers Abroad, a virtual group of ex-pat writers. All the contributors are, or have been, ex-pats. They live in, and have written about, more than 50 countries across all continents. Author Julia Gregson, a former ex-pat whose bestselling novel East of the Sun won the Prince Maurice Prize for romantic fiction, has written the foreword.      

All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to Books Abroad, a charity which coordinates the donation of free books for schools throughout the world, believing that education is a crucial aspect of human progress. The charity celebrates its 30^th anniversary this year and has supplied over 1,600 schools with desperately-needed books.

I enjoyed sharing my experiences of ex-pat life in Foreign Encounters and I think the rest of the contributors to this book did too. So I hope readers will be entertained by our tales.

Foreign Encounters is available from Lulu, price €9.99 (approximately £8.00), from today, Wednesday 24^th October. You’ll find it here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/writers-abroad/foreign-encounters/paperback/product-20450826.html.