Steph Swainston

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Steph Swainston is a British Fantasy/Science Fiction author, receiving critical acclaim (from China Miéville among others) for her first novel The Year of Our War (2004). The book won the 2005 Crawford Award and a nomination for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. The sequel No Present Like Time was published in 2005 and Swainston is currently working on her third book, The Modern World, set in the same universe and to be published in April 2007. The first chapter of The Modern World is available on her website.

She is frequently regarded by others as a member of the literary genre “the New Weird”, which aims to reform fantasy literature by transcending its traditional boundaries. However she denies that there is any such thing as the New Weird genre or movement. Swainston lists William Burroughs, Angela Carter and M. John Harrison as her major influences and Mervyn Peake as her favourite author. She likes the weird eccentric wordplay and nonsense poetry of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, a tradition continued by Douglas Adams and Jeff Noon's Vurt. She has also read Dumas, Dickens, Vonnegut, Huxley, the fantasy of Gene Wolfe, and adventure stories from Robert Louis Stevenson.

Ms. Swainston has previously worked in a variety of jobs, including as a qualified archaeologist (with a degree from Cambridge (Girton College) and a research degree from the University of Wales), being employed on a dig that researched the oldest recorded burial site in the UK as well as in Hayonim Cave in Israel. Additional occupations include working for an ethical company developing pharmaceuticals from cannabis, as an assistant in a zoo vet's lab and as an information scientist.

She was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1974. She lives in the UK. She has a message board at Night Shade Books. Her website is at www.stephswainston.co.uk Sample chapters of her novels are free online on the books page of her website.