Steven Amsterdam was born in New York City and has worked as a map editor, producer’s assistant, and a pastry chef. Since 2003, he has lived in Melbourne, where he is a writer and palliative care nurse. His fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The Age, Conde Nast Traveller, Meanjin, The Monthly, Salon, Sleepers Almanac, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, as well as other journals and anthologies.
His debut novel, Things We Didn’t See Coming, won The Age Book of the Year in Australia and was longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award. His second book, What the Family Needed, was longlisted for the International IMPAC Prize and shortlisted for the Encore Award. His new novel is The Easy Way Out.
Steven has been a fellow at Varuna-The Writers House, a resident at Rosebank and the Booranga Writers Centre, and a recipient of a grant from the Australia Council. He has run workshops or seminars from Capetown to Edinburgh. And, thanks to the Italian publisher of What the Family Needed, he once appeared in Uomo Vogue.