Dr Stephen Carver

Stephen Carver is an author, anthologist, and literary historian. He is currently General Editor of the Wordsworth Editions ‘Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural’ series and has curated many new collections, most notably by Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, J.S. Le Fanu, and E. Nesbit, as well as the British, Irish, and American Ghost Stories anthologies, and a collection of First World War poetry. For 16 years, he taught literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, spending three years in Japan as Professor of English at the University of Fukui, before joining The Literary Consultancy. He 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 Not-Not, Cascando, Birdsuit, and Veto, and he is the author of the historical novel Shark Alley. His literary 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). Stephen was the judge of the Past Search Prize for Nonfiction (2020) and the 2021 Olga Sinclair Short Story Competition. In 2022, he received the Arthur Conan Doyle Society Award for Scholarly Excellence, and was the winner of the British Vault of Horror Christmas short story prize in 2025. He is a reader for a number of academic publishers and journals, a regular contributor to the Wordsworth Blog, and has acted as a historical adviser for BBC Radio 4 and Channel 5. His latest book, Hell on Wheels: A History of Biker Movies (White Owl) will be published in August. Steve is married with two cats and a kid; he likes old motorcycles, wild rockabilly, and anything to do with horror.