# Colin Cotterill

Colin Cotterill (born 2 October 1952) is a London-born teacher, author, comic book writer and cartoonist. Cotterill has dual British and Australian citizenship. He lives in Thailand, where he writes the award-winning Dr Siri Paiboun mystery series set in the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and the Jimm Juree crime novels set in southern Thailand.

## Biography

Colin Cotterill was born in London and trained as a teacher. He worked as a physical education instructor in Israel, a primary school teacher in Australia, a counsellor for educationally handicapped adults in the United States and a university lecturer in Japan. More recently he has taught and trained teachers in Thailand and on the Burmese border. He spent several years in Laos, initially with UNESCO, and wrote and produced a forty-programme language teaching series; English By Accident, for Thai national television.
Cotterill became involved in child protection in the region and set up an NGO in Phuket, which he ran for the first two years. After two more years studying child abuse and one more stint in Phuket, he moved on to ECPAT, an international organisation combating child prostitution and pornography, and established their training programme for caregivers. During this time Cotterill contributed regular columns to the Bangkok Post.
Cotterill set up the Books for Laos project to send books to Lao children and sponsor trainee teachers. Books for Laos receives support from fans of the books and is administered on a voluntary basis. He has also been involved in Big Brother Mouse, a not-for-profit publishing project in Laos founded by Sasha Alyson.
Cotterill's first novel, The Night Bastard, was published by Suk's Editions in 2000. The positive reaction prompted him to become a full-time writer. His subsequent books include Evil in the Land Without (2003), Pool and Its Role in Asian Communism (2005), The Coroner's Lunch (2004), Thirty-Three Teeth (2005), Disco for the Departed (2006), Anarchy and Old Dogs (2007), Curse of the Pogo Stick (2008), The Merry Misogynist (2009), Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (2010), and Slash and Burn (2011).
In 2009 Cotterill received the Crime Writers' Association "Dagger in the Library" award as "the author of crime fiction whose work is currently giving the greatest enjoyment to library users".
Since 1990 Cotterill has been a regular cartoonist for national publications in Thailand. A Thai-language translation of his cartoon scrapbook Ethel and Joan Go to Phuket was published by Matichon in 2004. On 4 April 2004 he launched an illustrated bilingual column, Cycle Logical, in the news magazine Matichon Weekly. Some of these columns have since been collected in a book.

## Awards

* 2010 Finalist, Dilys Award for "Love Songs from a Shallow Grave"
* 2009 CWA "Dagger in The Library" award for The Dr. Siri Series
* 2009 Short-listed for Crimefest "Last Laugh Award" for Anarchy and Old Dogs
* 2008 Short-listed for "CWA Dagger" for The Coroner's Lunch
* 2007 Prix SNCF Du Polar for Le Dejeuner du Coroner (The Coroner's Lunch)
* 2006 Dilys Award for Thirty Three Teeth
* 2005 Nominee for Barry Award "Best First Novel" for The Coroner's Lunch