CV
NAME: Steve Korver
BORN: 1967, Canada
EDUCATED: BSc with English minor, University of Toronto
RESIDENCE: Canada until 1989, Asia until 1992, Amsterdam ever since…
WORK:
FREELANCE WRITER/EDITOR (current)
— As a journalist, I have had hundreds articles published covering travel, food, art, design, architecture, music, film, books, Yuri Gagarin, former Yugoslavia, and – most predominantly – on all things Amsterdam. I’ve contributed to such publications as: New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Condé Nast Traveller, McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Globe & Mail, Amsterdam Weekly, Eat (JP), Subbacultcha, Rails, Marmalade, Voyager, The Independent, Sunday Times (UK), Sunday Times (SA), Eyemazing, BBC Radio, Luxuria Music, Olive, Dazed & Confused, Hemispheres, Sky and Discovery.
— Managing Editor of CODE periodical’s ‘2012 Survival Kit Issue’ (fall/winter 2011/2012).
— Writer/editor/consultant for European Cultural Foundation (promoting cross-border culture in and beyond the EU), Dox Records (‘more than just a record company’ representing such bands as New Cool Collective, Zuco 103, etc), Virtueel Platform (‘the sector institute for e-culture in the Netherlands’) and Transnational Institute (international activist think-tank).
— Translator (Dutch-English) for SNOR Publishing for such titles as Cheerful in 3.5 Months (2011) and Pregnancy App for Men (upcoming).
— Editor-in-Chief of the cultural paper Amsterdam Weekly for 175 issues between 2005 and 2009. It had a weekly readership of 40,000 and won 14 European Newspaper Awards.
— Editor/correspondent/columnist/writer for Time Out (magazines and guidebooks) since 1993. Time Out was my mothership for many years… Most recently, I was the editor of the Time Out Amsterdam (Random House, 2007) guidebook and the Time Out Amsterdam Shortlist (Random House, 2009).
— In the past I was also consulting editor/writer for Virgin guidebook to Amsterdam, the writer of Fodor’s Gold Guide to Amsterdam, a contributor to Fodor’s Gold Guide to Holland, and the Amsterdam Bureau Chief for ontheroad.com, a global web/mobile site of restaurant and culture listings.
— As a print columnist I wrote ‘Our Man in the Gutter, Amsterdam’ (1998-9) for Time Out, ‘Eel-Advised’ (2000-2003) for Shark and ‘In this Issue and…’ (2006-2009) for Amsterdam Weekly. Now I blog.
FREELANCE COPYWRITER/CREATIVE (current)
—Texts for ‘Yuri Gagarin, 50 years of Human Space Flight’ (2011). The booklet is part of my on-going Road to Gagarin project with photographer René Nuijens. It won the first prize in the BLURB Photography Now Competition 2011 in the category Fine Art. Design by Ewoudt Boonstra. For more on the project go here.
— ‘Concept’, liner notes and song texts for the Anacondas’ album Bad Buzz/Lost in the Space Age (2010, Surfgalactic International). Read review here.
— I have worked as copywriter on international advertising campaigns for Sprint, IKEA and Diesel with such agencies as StrawberryFrog and Wink.
— Writer/director of Diesel Comics Great Adventures: From Walhalla to Inferno, a series of four short absurdist films combining live action, bluescreen and animation that were made to promote Diesel’s 2004-2005 seasons.
— There was extensive trade and media hype for my role as ‘imaginary film critic’ and poster-blurb writer for the award-winning Arling&Cameron album, Music for Imaginary Films (2000, Emperor Norton, USA).
SET DESIGNER/ART DIRECTOR (1993-9)
— For photo, museum, TV, film, commercials and music videos. Evolving from my 1980s roots as carpenter for home and film set, this was my money-maker while establishing writing career.
VOICE-OVERS/B-ACTOR (1990-2, sporadically since…)
— Supported travels with voice-overs and acting (i.e. generally getting kung-fu’ed into submission very, very quickly) in a variety of Thai, Hong Kong and Japanese productions.
— Other film work includes discovering a corpse in Baby Blue (Theo van Gogh, 2001), acting as anchorman in Timbuktu (David Schramm, 2007) and being a bumbling Canadian major in Snuf de Hond in Oorlogstijd (Steven de Jong, 2008). I’ve also starred in commercials for Diesel, Kink FM (NL), Radio 3 (NL) and E4 (Channel 4, UK). And I did voice-overs for the film Phileine zegt sorry (Robert Jan Westdijk, 2003) and for such commercials as the internationally-renowned GapKids ‘How about the Boys?’
