Occupation Novelist Name Steph Swainston | Role Author Awards Crawford Award | |
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Genre Literary fantasy New Weird Nominations John W. Campbell Award for the Best New Writer, Locus Award for Best First Novel Books The Year of Our War, No Present Like Time, The Modern World, Dangerous Offspring, The Castle Omnibus: The Year | ||
Stephanie Jane "Steph" Swainston is a British literary 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. Swainston's third book, The Modern World, is set in the same universe and was published in May 2007. Her fourth novel, Above the Snowline, was published in 2010.
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In 2011, she announced she was quitting full-time writing to become a chemistry teacher although she has subsequently indicated that she is working on a fifth novel to be published in 2016 and has three more planned.
Early life
Born in Bradford in 1974, Swainston attended St. Joseph's College, Bradford, Girton College, University of Cambridge, and the University of Wales. A qualified archaeologist, she was employed on digs at the oldest recorded burial site in the UK, Paviland Cave, as well as at Hayonim Cave, Israel. Other jobs included working for an ethical company developing pharmaceuticals from cannabis, as an assistant in a zoo's veterinary lab and as a researcher for the Ministry of Defence.
Novels
Swainston's work in the Castle series so far has been set in the "Fourlands", which the author has described as a secret childhood paracosm, further influenced by aspects of her later adult life, including the competitive academic world. The novels centre on the life of the "Circle", an elite group of immortals created and sustained by the Emperor, a near god-like figure engaged in a prolonged conflict with insectoid creatures, apparently from another world. Told in the first person, the novels follow the life of Jant, a winged humanoid with a distinctly flawed personality. The Castle series is also marked by the existence of multiple worlds, including the fantastic, baroque "Shift".
While characterised by others as a member of the New Weird fantasy literary genre, which aims to reform fantasy literature by transcending its traditional boundaries, Swainston has argued against labeling writers – including herself – within genres, arguing that good fantasy and mainstream literature instead form a continuum. She has been critical of the conservative nature of much commercial fantasy writing, and her approach embraces narrative themes unfamiliar to conventional fantasy, including drug use and graphic sex scenes, alongside the hyper-realistic depiction of warfare. Swainston describes her work as appealing to the ongoing deep structures of universal storytelling, as literature written as much in response to the author's own needs than as a response to specific market requirements.