Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Larry Butchins’ career with notebook, typewriter and then computer keyboard and screen, started as a cub reporter on Durban’s Natal Mercury, covering fires, accidents, shipping news and the legendary annual sardine run. He then moved to Johannesburg to work in the Sunday Tribune office, covering everything from interviewing visiting pop stars to politics and student riots. Eventually he was lured into Public Relations, working for one of South Africa’s leading PR companies before moving back to Durban to open his own PR firm.

On coming to live in Israel in 1987 with his family, Larry branched from PR into Marketing Communication, running a small English-language agency promoting Israeli products abroad. Having been through the “independent contractor” grinder for many years, Larry now works fulltime for a leading high-tech company as a senior marketing writer.

In addition to professional writing, Larry writes articles, stories, a travel blog (http://offbeat-travel.blogspot.co.il/), and children’s books, two of which have been published - one in the United States and one in South Africa. He is also currently working on a novelized version of his life as a young journalist in Apartheid South Africa.

Between the lines of copy, Larry is also a professional actor and is one of the founders of the Guild Theater Company of Raanana, together with Jodi and Rob Schenck and the late Pnina Isseroff. He has appeared in a wide variety of roles; his latest being that of Joe Keller in Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons”. His one-man cameo as Oom Schalk Lourens in “The Bekkersdal Marathon” by Herman Charles Bosman, won the Best Actor Award at the 2000 EADI English Drama Festival in Tel Aviv.

Regarding the art of writing, Larry quotes writer and dramatist Gene Fowler: "Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."

Larry and his wife, former Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) Marlyn Bernstein, live in Kfar Saba. They have three grown-up children and one grandson.