Hannah Stevens, Writer
Fiction, Nonfiction and Storytelling
Coming Soon: In their Absence
My first book-length short story collection, In their Absence is due to be published by Roman Books early in 2021.
What do you do when somebody walks out of the door and never returns? How do two young parents cope when their toddler disappears from a busy café? What happens when life is so unbearable, your only option is to disappear?
In their Absence is a powerful dissection of what it means to go missing. This compelling debut explores the human complexities behind the headlines and statistics to reveal unsettling truths about what it is to live in the shadow of absence.
These stories lay bare the agony of unknowing for those left behind. And they show us just how easily a human life can disappear.
"Hannah Stevens's remarkable stories are painfully beautiful and beautifully painful."
– Dr. Jonathan Taylor
Associate Professor of Creative Writing
Author of:
My book length short story collection, In Their Absence, will be published by Roman Books in 2021. The book explores stories of missing people and broken lives.
Without Makeup and Other Stories (Crystal Clear Creators Publishing, 2012). My debut short story collection, the result of an Arts Council England new talent competition.
Contributor to:
I have been featured in award-winning anthologies, including the following:
'She Picks Up the Cat', The Fairlight Book of Short Stories Volume 1 (Fairlight Books 2020).
'Bones,' High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories, (Valley Press UK, 2018).
'The Best Way to Kill A Butterfly', Unthology 10: Fight or Flight (Unthank Books, 2018).
"…laced with beautiful prose, allowing the reader to see the world in new ways…"
Everybody's Reviewing on Without Makeup
"Hannah Stevens cares about how her stories are told…"
Emma Lee, review of Without Makeup
"Hannah Stevens's fiction is beguilingly elliptical. Her stories draw you in to a fragile, compressed world. The prose is tightly controlled."
David Belbin, author of Bone and Cane
Selected nonfiction
I write and teach creative nonfiction. The following pieces reflect some of my current preoccupations:
'Before It Touches You,' Archer Magazine (May 2020).
'No Visible Damage', Loose Lips Magazine,(January 2020).
'The Familiar Absence of Words' Litro Magazine (September 2019).
Selected fiction
Over the past decade, I have published short stories globally. Here is a selection:
The Perseids, TSS Publishing (Forthcoming 2021).
'Bread' and 'The Night Before I Left', Sirius (May 2020).
'Man Under', Brilliant Flash Fiction 18 (June 2018).
'Ragdoll', Fictive Dream (June 2018).
'Ten Days Missing', Idle Ink (June 2018).
'The Redemption Window', Five:2:One Magazine (2018).
'Gabriel,' Losslit Magazine (2016).
'Anderson's Strawberry Farm,' The New Luciad (2016).
"In The Best Way to Kill a Butterfly by Hannah Stevens, a ghoulish trend for gathering and displaying butterflies serves as a backdrop for a relationship in crisis, and an exploration of the ways in which we hurt ourselves and those who love us in the face of loss."
Review of Unthology 10
"Such gut-wrenching brilliance that it actually brought my legs to a standstill on a busy street."
Rupert Dastaur, founder, TSS Publishing.
"These are stories that challenge the reader, that force an involvement in the text… Without Makeup and Other Stories demands an investment; Stevens is a skilled enough writer to make that investment worthwhile."
© 2021 Hannah Stevens, Writer • Built with GeneratePress