Dr Stephen Carver

Dr Stephen Carver is a writer, editor, and literary historian based in East Anglia.

For sixteen years, he taught literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, spending three years in Japan as a Professor of English at the University of Fukui. He left UEA in 2012 to become Head of Online Courses at the Unthank School of Writing, and to work with The Literary Consultancy in London mentoring early-career novelists. He has now retired from lecturing to writing full-time, although he continues to be affiliated with TLC. Stephen is the biographer of the Victorian novelist W.H. Ainsworth, and he has published extensively on literature, film, and history. His short stories have appeared in the collections Not-Not, Cascando, Birdsuit, and Veto, and he is the co-editor (with Ashley Stokes) of the first Unveiled Anthology of New Writing.

His first novel, Shark Alley, a historical romance based on the wreck of the HMS Birkenhead, was published in 2016. He is a reader for several academic publishers and journals and was the Chief Judge for the Past Size Prize for Nonfiction (2020) and the 2021 Olga Sinclair Short Story Competition. He has also acted as a historical adviser for projects broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Channel 5. Stephen is currently writing outsider history: The 19th Century Underworld was published in 2018, and this was followed by a second book on Ainsworth, The Author Who Outsold Dickens, in 2020 (both published by Pen & Sword). He is now working on The Opium Eaters: High Literature and the Art of Addiction for Morton Books. Stephen is an active blogger, writing about gothic literature, creative writing, and classic motorcycles.