Alice Stephens

Biography

Alice Stephens is a PhD student at the University of Essex. She achieved her BA in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Greenwich. A module on the marketing of science fiction and fantasy bestsellers led by Professor Andrew King sparked an academic interest in the genres. The marked assessments encouraged her to write essays, blog posts and mock-up marketing campaigns for A Wizard of Earthsea and Oryx and Crake. Her experience on the module inspired her to write an extract of a science fiction novel for a final year assessment. Alice graduated in 2019 with First Class Honours. While at Greenwich, her short stories Origami (2018) and A God Called Carl (2019) were published in the Greenwich Anthology, the annual anthology of creative writing curated by students in collaboration with Galley Beggar Press. In her second year, Alice co-founded the literary journal, Projector. In her role as fiction editor, she worked with aspiring writers from around the world, edited a wide-range of short fiction to a publishable standard, and solicited work from established writers. During her tenure as fiction editor at the journal, Projector published work by Alex Pheby, Paul Ewan, and Elizabeth Ellen. Alice edited fiction for the first issue (2018) and second issue (2019), which were both published in print and online. She also contributed to the launch events of both issues, reading selected works to invited guests. Alice returned to academia in 2021, when she studied for her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Essex. Having come out as a transgender woman in the years between study, she was keen to write about queer experience. For the Writing the Novel module, she wrote a novel extract about a transgender woman struggling with terminal illness. Through the Dramatic Structure module, she wrote an extract for a play, which explored trauma and control over the trans body. She was keen to take the Queer: Literature, Culture, History module, for which she wrote an essay exploring transphobia in Giovannis Room. For her dissertation, she wrote a play about a transgender womans difficulty to control how she comes out in different areas of her life. She was awarded her MA with a distinction in 2022. Alice took advantage of the University Frontrunner scheme, through which she secured an internship as a Marketing and Social Media Frontrunner Plus at the activities department of the Students Union. The role involved promoting opportunities within the SU societies, sports, and VTeam (volunteering and charitable work) wings. Towards the end of the MA, Alice created the Community Creative Writing project for the SU VTeam. The project consists of weekly creative writing workshops designed to be accessible for all attendees to follow the provided prompts, express themselves, and leave with an original short story or poem. Impressed by the programme, the SU asked her to continue providing weekly workshops for students after completing her MA. Alice remains the project leader. Over the course of this academic year, she aims to expand the programme by providing students the opportunity to donate handwritten poems to a scrapbook which will be passed to a local charity, and intends to publish a booklet of students micro-fiction and poetry, where proceeds of sales will be donated to charity. After completing her MA, Alice worked with Essex Libraries to devise and deliver an exhibition for LGBT History month 2023 at Colchester library. She created an exhibit which highlighted major legislation and community action pertaining to LGBTQ+ rights, mapped onto a timeline of the last eighty years. She also wrote a fictional account of a queer Colchester resident, detailing the local and personal repercussions of those national laws and campaigns. Alice also hosted some events for the library in celebration of LGBT history month, including their poetry slam and a creative writing workshop, which received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Alice has been keen to share her creative work in Colchester. She has read her poetry at local events. Her debut play, Spit It Out will be performed for a staged reading at a local venue in November 2023 and will transfer to the Lakeside Theatre for a full performance in February 2024. She has worked on the MA play which explores bodily autonomy over the trans body, which a local theatre has shown interest in developing. As of October 2023, Alice has returned to the University of Essex to study for her PhD in Creative Writing, under the supervision of Dr Sean Seeger. Her working research question is To what extent can a climate fiction novel represent the repercussions of right-wing populist rhetoric as trauma on the trans body? Her research interests encompass queer literature, speculative fiction, and populism.

Qualifications

• Master of Arts in Creative Writing University of Essex (2022)

• Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and English Literature University of Greenwich (2019)

Thesis