CJ Stone was born on 16th of June 1953 in Birmingham England the
eldest son of Mary and Eddy Stone. He has two sisters and a
brother.
In 1971 he went to
Cardiff University to study English Literature, but dropped out
after two years (it was the hippie thing to do). In 1981 he
resumed his studies in Bristol Polytechnic (now the University
of the West of England) where he gained a II-I in Humanities.
In 1984 he moved to
Whitstable, in which is where he has lived ever since. He says
he always wanted to be a writer. In 1993, after many
unsuccessful attempts to write the great English novel – he
wasn’t clever enough - he decided to simplify his approach and
to write for magazines and newspapers instead.
Someone lent him a
copy of Post Office by Charles Bukowski. CJ was impressed by the
street-level poetry of everyday life he encountered there. He
took this as a model and began writing what was to become his
Housing Benefit Hill series.
The first was a story
called Witch Way Out Of Here quickly followed by Still Life
Behind Drawn Curtains, both written in the early part of
1993. He sent these off to the Guardian Weekend on the
off-chance, having read a story about council estate life there.
A
few weeks later his A4 stamped addressed envelope returned, but
without the manuscripts.
His stories had been
accepted!
The first Housing
Benefit Hill column appeared in the Guardian Weekend in September 1993,
and the column continued for three years, until September 1996. It was a
great success, and made the writer – temporarily – famous. Other columns
followed. On The Edge in
the Big Issue. Free Party Chronicles in Mixmag.CJ Stone’s
Britain, which replaced Housing Benefit Hill in the Guardian,
and which continued till March 1998.
In this time two
books were also written: Fierce Dancing and The Last of the
Hippies, both published by Faber & Faber.
Further columns have included:
Written in Stone,
for Prediction magazine, Offline
in the Big Issue Cymru, and
On Another Planet
in the Whitstable Times. Features, reviews and articles have
also appeared in the New Statesman, the Glasgow Herald, the
London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the
Independent on Sunday and in Saga Magazine, amongst others.
There have also been two more books:
Housing Benefit Hill,
published by AK Press, and the
Trials of Arthur(with Arthur
Pendragon) published by Thorsons/Element.
Current columns include:
Written in Stone
in the Whitstable Gazette, and
Tales of Ordinary Magic in
Kindred Spirit.
He is still thinking
about his next book.
|
