Paul Stewart

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-27

Paul Stewart was born in June 1955 in London, England, and grew up in Muswell Hill in North London before his family moved to Morden in South London; English was his favorite school subject, and he has said he "hated Mathematics." He earned a B.A. in English with a creative-writing component from the University of Lancaster (1974-1977) and an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia (1978), where he studied under Angela Carter and Malcolm Bradbury. Before writing full time he worked as an English teacher in Heidelberg, Germany (1979-1982), taught English as a foreign language in Sri Lanka (1982-1983), and taught in the UK (1983-1990). His debut, The Thought Domain (1988), launched a prolific career writing children's, young-adult, and adult fiction across thriller, horror, and fantasy genres. Beginning in 1993 he formed a long-running creative partnership with illustrator Chris Riddell, together creating The Edge Chronicles, a fifteen-novel fantasy series completed in 2019 and one of the most acclaimed illustrated fantasy series for young readers of its era. He also wrote the Far Flung Adventures trilogy, the Freelance trilogy, the Barnaby Grimes quartet, and the Wyrmeweald trilogy. He won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize Gold Medal in 2004 for Fergus Crane and Silver Medals in 2005 and 2006. He lives in Brighton, England, with his family.