'John Stephenson has had a career teaching English (predominantly as a Foreign Language); Text, Melbourne, in 1996 published his The Optimist, a portrait of the poet Christopher Brennan as a young man. Widely and positively reviewed, he was cited in the doctoral dissertation of Dr Helen O’Reilly (UNSW) as a contemporary exemplar of Late Modernism’s “collapsing of Time”. John continues to be a manuscript assessor, mentor, editor, and workshop conductor, has reviewed books for the weekend newspapers and has placed various pieces, including poems, in magazines such as Southerly and Overland. (Source Brandl & Schlesinger)
