Riding the Music Wave, Vol. 9: Charlie J. Stephens
I once met a woman at a writing workshop who told the story of her husband complaining that she kept just lying on the couch when she was supposed to be writing. “I am writing!” she told him. No apologies. I think about that all the time, “writing” in my truck, at the rainy beach, at work between customers, when I can’t sleep at 3am. Though I can’t listen to music when I actually put pen to paper, listening while doing this other form of writing definitely helps. It’s all about the goddamn feelings! How to capture those potent emotions in a character’s gesture, or in the dark, cold skies of a scene’s physical landscape? Like any true obsessive, I listen to songs until they are seared in my brains—for life. Sometimes this takes years. It drives every partner I’ve ever had insane when I really go for it. But… I’m writing. No apologies.
Charlie J. Stephens is a non-binary writer from the Pacific Northwest. Born and raised in Salem, Oregon, Charlie has lived all over the U.S. as a bike messenger, wilderness guide, high school English teacher, and seasonal shark diver (for educational purposes only). Resident of Port Orford on the southern Oregon coast, they are the owner of Sea Wolf Books & Community Writing Center. Charlie’s short fiction has appeared in Best Small Fictions Anthology, Electric Literature, New World Writing, Original Plumbing/Feminist Press, and elsewhere. Their debut novel, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest, was published by Torrey House Press in April 2024. It was long-listed for The Center For Fiction’s 2024 First Novel Prize, and is currently a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards/Ken Kesey Award for Fiction, the Indie Foreword Award in LGBTQ+ Fiction, and the Leslie Feinberg Award in Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. Their new collection of short stories will be published by Buckman (Portland, OR) in March, 2026.
More at charliejstephenswriting.com and seawolfbooks.com.