Chichester academic celebrates launch of Brilliant Blue

Karen Stevens, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, has just published her debut collection of interlinked short stories, Brilliant Blue.

Set on a fictional housing estate on the South Coast, Brilliant Blue explores the lives of its residents. The stories draw partly from Karen’s own experiences of growing up in a working-class household and navigating class boundaries when, in her twenties, she entered higher education and later pursued a career in academia. She explained: “It’s an odd thing, having a foot in both camps – so to speak – as I no longer quite fit into my working-class roots, and I’m too self-conscious to feel at ease in predominantly middle-class environments. Much of my writing explores this psychic tension around class.”

Alongside her teaching, Karen has written two academic books and edited the award-winning short story collection High Spirits, which won the Saboteur Award for Best Anthology in 2019. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, but Brilliant Blue marks her first solo collection.

Speaking about the inspiration behind the book, Karen said: “I originally wrote the pieces as standalone short stories, but gradually I began to see the connections between them. One of the themes I explore is power dynamics – within relationships and between individuals and society. These struggles are universal, but for my characters, they’re intensified by the financial precarity they often face. Ultimately, though, reading is about stepping into someone else’s world, and these stories are about people striving for something better – whether it’s money, love, friendship, or a sense of belonging.”

Published by Barbican Press on 19 June, Brilliant Blue was officially launched at the Festival of Chichester on 25 June and has received a warm reception. Praise includes: “Bold, beautiful and ebullient, it fizzes with life and dazzles with sheer power and intelligence” – Alison MacLeod and “Perfectly constructed, wonderfully written stories” – Suzanne Joinson.

Karen is already developing an idea for her next fiction book, which she plans to begin writing this summer. “It’s been brewing for a while,” she said. “Who knows what will happen once I start. The writer Margaret Forster once said that when a book is ‘boiling up’ for her, it’s just a ‘shadowy vision and odd lines’ – and she’s right.”