‘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…

I’ve been a Writer in Residence at Bluewater Shopping Centre as part of archiTEXTS for the 2013 & 14 Wakefield Literature Festivals. In addition to the publications in the slider above, my stories have been published in magazines such as Westerly, Horizont and the Reater and anthologies like route’s Compendium and Naked City and Brace from Comma Press.  A rare poem…

Interland was a collaboration with Kath McKay, Adam Strickson and from Yorkshire, England and Carita Nystrom, Marko Hautala and Ralf Andtbacka from Ostrobothnia, Finland. ‘Steve Dearden’s short prose epiphanies are perfectly placed at the beginning of the book. There’s a carefully organised and mellifluous quality that carries you along. There is also a great variety of…

Single Skin features nine short stories and is published by Smith Doorstop as an ebook and is available from Amazon for Kindle. ‘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…

Wakelost Wakefound was commissioned as part of my residency at the 2013 and 2014 Wakefield Litfests. It allowed me to play with three things I love: writing, taking photographs and messing about with them in Pixelmator. I have always been fascinated by the way stillness and movement intersect in the patchwork of urban spaces around, what was…

The LS6 story began many years ago when my Spanish was very poor, I read in El Pais about a Spanish book set in Leeds. I looked everywhere but couldn’t find it (perhaps because I thought it was a book of poetry).  Then I met the author, Mario Crespo, at the Festival de Premier Roman…

Being back home a series of Manchester stories have been emerging, here’s Cheshire Life in this beautiful anthology of writers associated with Wakefield’s Red Shed edited by John Clarke available from Currock Press. I have a piece about mourning and loss in an anthology edited by Ray French and Kath McKay. Based on a blog piece…