Dr Jon Stone

Jon is a Lecturer in Creative Writing, and Course Leader for ARU's MA Creative Writing and MA Creative Writing and Publishing.

Jon is a poet and poetry editor interested in hybrid and ludic literary forms, interactive fiction and collaborative writing. He is a co-director of Sidekick Books, a small press with a focus on multi-author mixed-genre anthologies.

[email protected]

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Background

Jon’s ongoing research combines practice and theory, and chiefly concerns the evolving relationship between new and old media. He has published papers in the field of game studies, as well as books and pamphlets of poetry (both as author and commissioning editor).

School of Forgery (Salt, 2012) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and in the year of its publication Jon was awarded a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award. Bad Kid Catullus, a multi-author anthology of new, formally radical translations of Catullus co-edited with Kirsten Irving, was one of The Guardian’s Top 10 poetry anthologies of 2018.

Jon has also published articles for The Guardian and in the UK gaming press, and worked as a freelance writer for toy companies. Before coming to ARU, he taught poetry, e-book publishing and professional writing modules at the University of Winchester.

Research interests

• Poetry (lyric, narrative, visual, experimental)
• Poem-game hybridity and interplay
• Digital and interactive literature
• Collaborative writing
• Play and creativity in critical culture

Qualifications

• PhD in poem-game interplay, University of the West of England
• BA (Hons) in English Literature with a Minor in Creative Writing, University of East Anglia

Selected recent publications

Stone, J., 2022. Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Video Games. Berlin: DeGruyer

Stone, J., 2021. Sandsnarl. Birmingham: The Emma Press

Stone, J. 2021. Separation Anxiety: Plotting and Visualising the Tension Between Poetry and Videogames. Game Studies 21(2)

Stone, J. 2021. Unravelanche. Cardiff: Broken Sleep Books

Stone, J. 2020. Frog Leaps In: Haiku and the Struggle For and Against the Natural World in Japanese RPGs. Replaying Japan vol.2, pp.157-164

Stone, J., and Irving, K., eds. 2018. Battalion. London: Sidekick Books

Stone, J., and Irving, K., eds. 2018. No, Robot, No!. London: Sidekick Books

Stone, J., and Irving, K., eds. 2017. Bad Kid Catullus. London: Sidekick Books

Recent presentations and conferences

'Not the Magician's Apprentice: On Roddy Lumsden and Informal Mentoring' at Poetry and Mentoring Symposium, University of Southampton, 8 October 2021.

'Poems Are Toys' at Lines of Inquiry: New Approaches to Poetry, York University, 30 July 2021.

'Modding the Waste Land: Intertextual Mutation Between Games and Poems' at DiGRA 2019: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo Mix, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, 7 August 2019.

'Inter/Active: The Digital Frontier and Pioneering Poetry' (Chair) at the Northern Poetry Symposium 2019: Inter/Play, Newcastle, 2 May 2019.

'An Introduction to Ludokinetic Poetry' at Off the Page: Chapter Two, The British Library, London, 13 April 2019.

'Characteristically Tensive: The Unreal in Poetic Gaming' at DiGRA 2018: The Game is the Message, University of Turin, 21 July, 2018.