Stephen J. Williams [ stephenjwilliams.com ] has published writing and images in many literary magazines and newspapers. He has been the recipient of the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Anne Elder Award and John Shaw Neilson Award for Poetry (1989), the Association for Australian Literature’s Mary Gilmore Prize, and the University of Melbourne’s John Masefield Prize. He lives in St Kilda (Victoria, Australia).
In the 1980s, at Meanjin, a literary magazine founded by Clem Christesen in the 1940s, Stephen worked with the editor Jim Davidson—typing letters, sorting envelopes into postcode order, making tea, and playing Scrabble with A. A. Phillips (who coined the much-quoted phrase 'cultural cringe'). Much of Stephen’s writing in the 1980s and 1990s was published by the editor Barrett Reid. Stephen worked with Barrett at the Heide farmhouse in Heidelberg (well before it was turned into a gift shop and while there were still possums living in the ceiling).
In recent years Stephen’s artistic practice has sought to combine writing with visual arts, especially drawing. (He's a fan of Peter Booth, Diane Arbus, Michaël Borremans, and Wallace Stevens.) |
