Writing
My stories have been published in magazines such as Westerly, Horizont, The Reater and anthologies by Route and Comma. A rare poem appeared in the Red Squirrel Press anthology celebrating the Yorkshire start of the Tour de France and there's a short piece about death in the anthology End Notes. I’ve also used writing as a creative form of evaluation with people like Leeds 365 Stories.
I’ve led workshops for festivals and writers groups, am visiting fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. I had a lot of fun being Writer in Residence at the Bluewater Shopping Centre and Wakefield Literature Festival.
“Not long into a Steve Dearden story, I’m always a bit lost, bewildered almost. I mean in a good way – compelled not confused. There’s a mystery I have to solve. Part of the mystery is in the meticulous unfolding of the story and the other part is the powerful force and density of his language; dense and then suddenly the language is very spare, oddly abstract, yet I always feel present in the physical event. Enigmatic. I guess that’s the best word. I’m far away, third person far away, then I’m so close I can smell the breath coming at me off the page. In a moment, the story can go violent, almost too violent, then sexy, really sexy, then funny. Not just funny, hilarious. Strangely obsessive. And very very smart. Wonderful moments of existential clarity. And then he breaks my heart. Bastard.”
Interland
A collaboration with Kath McKay, Adam Strickson from Yorkshire, England with Carita Nystrom, Marko Hautala and Ralf Andtbacka from Ostrobothnia, Finland.
‘There’s a carefully organised and mellifluous quality that carries you along. There is also a great variety of location: his city centre office, the reservoirs on which he sails, the moors surrounding and draining under his house, the rugby pitch of his school days and the Manchester Ship Canal. Throughout there’s a marriage of detail and resonance that is both beguiling and revealing.’ Ian Pople
Six steps under water – Kuusi askelta veden alla – Sex steg under vatten beautifully edited by Janet Fisher, is published by Smith Doorstop and includes translations in Finnish and Swedish along with photos, introductions and email exchanges between the writers.
Single Skin
Single Skin features nine short stories and is published by Smith Doorstop as an ebook and on whichever site you buy your ebooks from.
‘The unexpected and the extraordinary presented in a terrific matter of fact way – it startles the reader. Nothing’s redundant but there’s a strange expansion of space inside these stories so that they seem to grow when you’ve read them.’ Patricia Dunker
‘I read Single Skin over a family reunion weekend at a rather cheerless Travel Lodge in Southampton which sort of fitted the stories, out of comfort zone, slightly disturbing, making you hold up your own everyday life against it. Not one cliched setting or situation but always a universal truth.’ - Jonathan Hall
Wakelost Wakefound
Commissioned as part of my two festival residency at Wakefield Litfest. It allowed me to play with three things I love: writing, taking photographs and messing about with place.
I have always been fascinated by the way stillness and movement intersect in the patchwork of urban spaces aroun what was then the festival’s beautiful 18th century HQ, The Orangery: a bit of industrial edgeland, a gateway among banks and hotels converted to clubs and bars, a high street of empty shops that local activists were reanimating, the almost collegiate area of Georgian brick, and then the new developments around Burgage Square and Wakefield One. And sitting side by side, the refugee hostel and the maximum security prison I used to go inside to place writers in residence.
In the resulting online piece you can follow four characters, Clara, Xoriyo, Lyn and Pete, through 24 Wakefield hours.
Four Tower Stories
Here’s something I’m working on at the moment, four stories that come from an obsession with the Manchester skyline, returning to my home city and recent experiences of the klepto-care system siphoning our families and country. Let me know what you think.
Occasional
One of the pieces of advice I give members of the Writing Squad is that is you are going to start a blog or a Substack or a podcast, make sure you post regularly and always have three in your back pocket.
Like most of the advice I’ve given it’s gone unheeded. By me. But there is still some occasional writing that I’ve moved across various blogging sites and are now on Medium. From cultural commentary, through writing from my photographs, to marking the death of my writing guru and friend, the novelist Tom Spanbauer, and a visitation from a white peacock. More is coming - on my Father’s list obsession, the slow careful work of developing writers as opposed to the one-hit prize-window-pitch deadline mania of our industry, and something about how being edited by a surgeon changes your identity moving through the world.
Editing
Not really editing but I acted as the poor translator with excellent translator Sally Ashton on Madrid writer Mario Crespo’s Leeds based novel LS6.
I’ve edited novels such as Val Cale’s The Blackstuff, what would be called auto-fiction now but wasn’t then, and Robert Endicott’s Leeds United memoire One Northern Soul as well as non-fiction books on Cultural Renewal and Irna Qureshi’s Coming of Age, celebrating 21 years of Mela in the UK.
