Bio and Career Overview

www.keithstevenson.com

Bio

Keith was born in Glasgow, Scotland and spent his early working life  in community arts, firstly as a drama worker in Newarthill, then as supervisor of the Maryhill Arts Centre and finally as coordinator of the Easterhouse Arts Project which received major funding from the Glasgow City Council as part of the 1990 European City of Culture celebrations.

He first came to Australia in 1988, backpacking around the country and finally settled in Melbourne. He returned to Glasgow to work in Easterhouse for a period before becoming a permanent Australian resident.

Keith was interested in science fiction at an early age, reading as much as he could find, especially Asimov, Niven and Dick. He remembers what first turned him on to science fiction. 'I must have been about 8 or 9 and I read in a junior encyclopedia that the sun would one day go nova and planet Earth would be destroyed. The book pointed out that this wouldn't happen for billions of years, but that didn't mean much to a child. I was inconsolable for days. And then I found a science fiction book and I realised that humanity could survive the death of the sun if we escaped to other planets. SF gave me a message of hope and it's that message which still fires my imagination today - that humanity will survive, however altered.'

On emigrating to Melbourne, Keith secured a job in the public service, but he quickly got involved in the local speculative fiction scene, meeting Dirk Strasser at a TAFE course on SF and Fantasy writing.

'Dirk told me about Aurealis, and I wanted to get involved, so I became a slush pile reader and later submissions manager for the mag. Then in 1999, Dirk said they wanted to sell the magazine as a going concern. I was worried about what would become of it. Australian markets at that time were few and far between. Altair had folded, Eidolon was on hiatus and Orb moved to an annual anthology. There was no ASIM or Agog! in those days. So I talked to Sara Creasy, who was the proof reader for the mag, and Trudi Canavan, who handled the art side at the time. They agreed to stay on if I made a bid to take over the mag. I couldn't afford to buy it, but I put together a business plan and talked to Dirk and Stephen Higgins, offering to run the mag for them and leave them free to do other things. Luckily they agreed, and the rest is history, but I couldn't have done it without Sara and Trudi.'

Keith ran the magazine from 2001 to the end of 2004. He was also organising convenor of the Aurealis Awards for a number of years before they came under the auspices of Fantastic Queensland.  During that time he also wrote a SF Novel, Horizon,  which is currently under consideration, and had two short stories published. He's now working on a multi-book space opera called The Way of The Kresh.

Keith is a member of SuperNOVA the Melbourne-based speculative fiction writers' group. In 2006, he and fellow SuperNOVA writer Andrew Macrae launched coeur de lion, a  speculative fiction publishing imprint, and with it their first anthology, c0ck, a collection of original stories interrogating masculinity within a speculative fiction framework. In October 2007, coeur de lion  published Rynemonn, the long awaited conclusion to the Tom Rynosseros stories from Terry Dowling who won the Peter MacNamara Award that year.

Keith returned to working for Aurealis Magazine as a science fiction and horror reviewer for Aurealis Magazine issues #40 - 44. But he also continued publishing with coeur de lion and in November 2009, X6 - anovellanthology was released featuring all new novellas by six of the most exciting speculative fiction authors working in Australia today. X6 won the Aurealis Award for best Horror story for Paul Haines' blistering dystopian outback tale 'Wives', and the World Fantasy Awards for Margo Lanagan's fantasy novella 'Sea-Hearts'.

From November 2008 to May 2011, Keith also produced and hosted the monthly Terra Incognita Australian Speculative Fiction Podcast which featured the best Australian speculative fiction read by the authors who created it.

Keith's urban horror tale, 'A Mirror, Darkly' was published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine Issue #51 in June 2011.

In November 2011 coeur de lion publishing released it's latest anthology, Anywhere but Earth, a collection of 29 original tales of humanity's adventures set anywhere except the planet of our birth.

Keith will be a guest of honour at Conflux 8 in Canberra, in September 2012.

He now lives in Sydney with his partner Nicola, his pet laptop and way too many books.

'A Mirror, Darkly' published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #51

Publishes Anywhere but Earth (coeur de lion publishing)