Steven Ford Brown

Steven Ford Brown in 1983. Photo by Dennis Harper

Steven Ford Brown (born September 11, 1952 in Florence (Lauderdale County), Alabama, is a journalist, music critic, publisher and translator, currently living in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the founder and Managing Director of The Official Tomas Tranströmer Website, a website dedicated to the life and work of the 2011 Nobel Prize winner for Literature.

Of French and Scottish descent, Brown is the son of Ford Brown (a Marine veteran of World War II and sales executive) and Gloria Peters (a housewife). As a high school student in Birmingham he became interested in the San Francisco Beatnik literature of the 1950s and '60s and the music of the British Invasion bands of the era. He completed his bachelor's in English and Literature in 1992 at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He has has also studied at the University of Houston and Harvard University's Extension School.

Brown moved to Southside in 1973 and immersed himself in the neighborhood's counter-cultural community. He contributed columns to The Paperman, often profiling national artists and poets. In 1975 he became editor of UAB's "Aura Literary Arts Review" and founded his own Thunder City Press (later Ford-Brown & Co.) publishing company. He and Danny Gamble organized an "Old Town Music and Reading Series" at Drew Tombrello's Old Town Music Hall on Morris Avenue. He was awarded a "Silver Bowl" by the Birmingham Festival of Arts in 1987 for his literary efforts.

Brown has contributed writing to The Christian Science Monitor, The Harvard Review, Poetry magazine, Rolling Stone, Jacket and Verse. He edited a volume of poems by John Beecher and co-edited an anthology of contemporary Southern poets.

After moving to Texas, Brown worked as a researcher for a local public television station and began translating the works of Spanish poet Ángel González. His Astonishing World: The Selected Poems of Ángel González, 1956-1986 was published by the non-profit Milkweed Editions in 1992. He followed that with translations of Nicomedes Suarez Arauz, Jorge Carrera Andrade, and Juan Carlos Galeano. He edited two special issues of the Atlanta Review focusing on Latin American and Spanish poetry and has been involved in Alan Cordle's "Foetry" campaign against the institutionalization of American poetry awards.

Now residing in Boston, Massachusetts, Brown worked for Wellington Management, a private investment firm, from 1998 to 2006. He resigned to resume working as a writer and editor. He now writes for "Boxing Herald.com" and the "Boston Music Spotlight". He was awarded a residency at the Swedish Writers Union in Stockholm, Sweden and was a featured speaker at a 2009 conference on Harriet Beecher-Stowe and John Beecher at the Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier III, France. Brown founded the Lion Publishing Group

Bibliography (Books)

International

• Microgramas, Jorge Carrera Andrade, Orogenia Corporacion Cultural: Quito, Ecuador, 2007

United States

• One More River To Cross: The Selected Poems of John Beecher, New South Books , 2003
• Century of The Death of The Rose: The Selected Poems of Jorge Carrera Andrade, New South Books , 2002
• Edible Amazonia: Twenty poems from God's Amazonian Recipe Book, Nicomedes Suarez Arauz, Bitter Oleander Press, 2002
• Invited Guest: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Southern Poetry, University of Virginia Press, 2001
• Astonishing World: The Selected Poems of Ángel González, 1956-1986, MN: Milkweed Editions, 1993
• Heart’s Invention: On The Poetry Of Vassar Miller, Ford-Brown & Co., Publishers, 1988
• Contemporary Literature in Birmingham: An Anthology, Birmingham Public Library/ Thunder City Press, Birmingham, AL,1983

References

• Steven Ford Brown (January 16, 2011) Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia - accessed February 3, 2011
• Steven Ford Brown website
• Steven Ford Brown at New South Books
• Steven Ford Brown at Somerville, MA Arts Council

Related Websites

• "The Saban Way: Alabama Will Defeat Texas In The Rose Bowl" (January 6, 2010)
• Yim Tam Lisa Wong,“Steven Ford Brown in conversation with Y. T. Wong," Jacket magazine (Australia), August 2002
• Louis E. Bourgeois, “Foetry.com And What Academia Doesn't Want You to Know About the Creative Writing Industry, An Interview with Steven Ford Brown," Left Curve magazine, Number 30, 2005
• "An Afternoon with Transtromer in Stockholm," Alabama Writers Forum Blog Archive, October 17, 2011
• Official Website of Tomas Tranströmer
• "Steven Ford Brown remembers Spanish poet Ángel González", NewSouth Books