Paul Nicholas was born in Mountain Ash in the South Wales Valleys, an area he still feels emotionally attached to.

He studied Comparative Literature at Essex University, and has lived in Liverpool, Swansea, Aberdeenshire, and North Wales, and now Worksop in Nottinghamshire. He and his family moved there 40 years ago.

His working life has encompassed community arts, postman, teaching, acting, play work, and community development. More recently he has been heavily engaged in story telling.

He enjoys walking when sometimes he collects words which sometimes go into poems. Some of his poems owe their genesis to the poetry and creative writing workshops run by Sheffield Libraries. He is a Quaker.