Hi there!

I'm Stewart C Baker, an academic librarian and author of speculative fiction, poetry, and interactive fiction. From 2017-2020 I was also editor-in-chief of subQ, an online magazine for interactive fiction.

I write pretty broadly in fantasy, science fiction, and associated speculative genres. I especially like flash fiction and Japanese poetic forms like haiku. Both give me a lot of room for experimentation with structure, which is something I enjoy. And the fact that they're shorter makes it a bit easier for me to successfully bring projects to completion—something I struggle with on larger projects.

I live in Oregon but was born in the UK and have previously lived in Coulsdon, UK; South Carolina, USA; and Nagoya, Japan. (はい、日本語話せます。)

When I'm not writing or spending time with my family, I enjoy reading, learning languages, and generally nerding out.

I've had just over 55 short stories published since my first paid sale in 2013 (to the now-defunct Penumbra eZine). I also have a handful of poetry publications to my name and a few self-published pieces of interactive fiction.

Here are one or two things to check out from each category.

Fiction

• “How They Name the Ships” – Frozen Wavelets, December 21, 2020
   
• How I Became Coruscating Queen of All the Realms, Pierced the Obsidian Night, Destroyed a Legendary Sword, and Saved My Heart’s True Love,” co-authored with Matt Dovey – No Shit, There I Was, Alliteration Ink, February 2017

Poetry

• “The Fragmented Poet Files a Police Report” – SFPA 2017 Poetry Contest, first place, long division
   
• “that leaky faucet” (haiku) – Modern Haiku, 51:2 (summer 2020)

Interactive Fiction

• Untitled Nopperabou Game – A spooky homage to Untitled Goose Game, written for EctoComp 2019

For a full bibliography, you can visit my list of published stories on my website.

I have a lot of ongoing projects at the moment:

• A fantasy novel with E.D.E Bell
• A novel-length fantasy text game with James Beamon
• Revising a solo fantasy novel
• Revising two SF novellas
• Various SF and fantasy short stories at varying stages of revision
• Poems???
• At least one shorter piece of interactive fiction

And that's outside work-related projects (I'm a full-time academic librarian) and family-related things (I'm a full-time dad). And, you know... sleep(???).

The thought of adding a new project on top of all that makes me tired, but using one of these existing projects somehow feels like cheating. With that in mind, I've made my motto this year small but sustainable, and my intent is to log (at least) 15 minutes a day on writing.

That might not seem like much, but I've been simultaneously approaching burnout and struggling to make time for fiction/poetry writing for a while, and I hope this will help me rebuild a sustainable writing practice where I can feel like I'm making progress without exhausting myself.