CV
BORN: Canada
EDUCATED: BSc with English minor, University of Toronto
RESIDENCE: Canada until 1989, Asia until 1992, Amsterdam ever since…
WEBSITE: www.stevekorver.com
CONTACT: stevekorver [at] gmail.com / mobile: 00 31 (0)6 242 777 56
FREELANCE WRITER/EDITOR/TRANSLATOR (current)
— hundreds of articles in print covering travel, food, drink, sex & relationships, art & design, books, music, Yuri Gagarin, Serbian gangster kitsch, and – most predominantly – on all things Amsterdam. Publications include: New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Condé Nast Traveller, McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Globe & Mail, Atlas Obscura, 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, Discovery, Wallpaper and DUF.
— Contributing writer to Book of Denim, Vol. 2 (Amsterdam Publishing, 2018): Over a year, I travelled the world – from China to Tunisia to Italy to France to the UK – to write in-depth features on individuals and companies out to transform the notoriously dirty textile industry.
— Editor/columnist at Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) for Love Matters – an online platform ‘about love, sex, relationships and everything in between’ – with versions for India, Egypt, Mexico, Venezuela, China and Kenya. Since launching in 2011, Love Matters has attracted 12 million visits and gathered one million followers on social media. In 2013, we won the WAS Award for Excellence and Innovation in Sexuality Education. My weekly column Sex in the Press was a (mostly) humorous round-up of global news stories related to affairs of both the heart and the loins.
— Editor/writer for Wallpaper City Guide Amsterdam (Phaidon, 2012, 2013 and 2014) and Wallpaper City Guide Rotterdam (Phaidon, 2014).
— Editor/correspondent/columnist/writer for Time Out (magazines and guidebooks) since 1993. Most recently, I was the editor of the Time Out Amsterdam (2014) guidebook and the more compact Time Out Amsterdam Shortlist (2014).
— Managing Editor/writer for men’s style periodical CODE’s ‘2012 Survival Kit Issue’ (fall/winter 2011/2012) and ‘Edit and Reconstruct Issue’ (spring/summer 2012). Full disclosure: I actually still do most of my shopping at Mark’s Work Warehouse.
— Writer/editor/consultant for Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s Africa Desk (stay tuned for the new website WAZA!), Dox Records (‘more than just a record company’ representing New Cool Collective, Zuco 103, etc), Virtueel Platform (‘sector institute for e-culture in the Netherlands’) and Transnational Institute (international activist think-tank).
— 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. Best. Job. Ever.
— Writer/editor/translator for European Cultural Foundation (promoting cross-border culture in and beyond the EU). I also edited their Narratives for Europe website, which included translating the work of NL-based authors such as Abdelkader Benali, Jan Brokken and Rodaan Al Galidi. The basic challenge: how do you make “never again” sexy again?
— Translator (Dutch-English) for SNOR Publishing for titles such as Friendship Book for Backpackers (2018), Cheerful in 3.5 Months (2011) and Pregnancy App for Men (2010). I also translated/edited Johan Idema’s Present! Rethinking Live Classical Music (2012). Other regular clients include: Rijksmuseum, IDFA and Amnesty Netherlands.
— In the past I was consulting editor/writer for guidebooks, including Virgin Amsterdam, Fodor’s Gold Guide to Amsterdam, and Fodor’s Gold Guide to Holland. I was also 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 London, ‘Eel-Advised’ (2000-2003) for Shark and ‘In this Issue and…’ (2006-2009) for Amsterdam Weekly.
COPYWRITER/CREATIVE (current)
— International communication campaigns and projects for Affordable Art Fair, Bread & Butter, City of The Hague, Converse, Diesel, Heineken, IKEA, ING, Sprint, TomTom and Zoku with creative agencies such as Concept Machine, Festina Amsterdam, KesselsKramer, Natwerk, Sowiesohelder, StrawberryFrog, Tribal DDB and Wink. In particular, I’m the person to call for freestyle brainstorming, precision execution and the nailing of one-liners.
— Road to Gagarin is an ongoing project with stellar photographer/director René Nuijens. Our goal: to help establish Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, as a global hero and not just a Russian one. Our booklet ‘Yuri Gagarin, 50 years of Human Space Flight’ (2011) won first prize in the BLURB Photography Now Competition (2011) in the category Fine Art. Our four short films ‘The Yuri Gagarin Goose Chase’ (Cuba, 2010), ‘The First Yugoslavian Cosmonaut’ (Serbia, 2012), ‘Yuri on the Phone’ (Serbia, 2016) and ’Ringo Rocket Star and His Song for Yuri Gagarin‘ (Serbia, 2017) have won numerous prizes at film festivals worldwide.
— ‘Concept’, liner notes and song texts for the Anacondas’ album Bad Buzz/Lost in the Space Age (2010, Surfgalactic International).
— 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. The screenings in Vienna included carrying a lovely dwarf around town – it was my big Fellini moment.
— 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 Canadian carpenter, “building weird stuff” was my money-maker while establishing writing career. Here’s an oldie but a goldie. You can also ask me about the time when Nepco and I almost accidentally killed Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands, with a UFO…
VOICE-OVERS/B-ACTOR (1990-2, sporadically since…)
— Supported travels with voice-overs and acting (i.e. generally getting quickly kung-fu’ed into submission) in a variety of Thai, Hong Kong and Japanese productions. In general, I was a victim of vicious stereotyping. Luckily, my experience was validated later by a Mexican-American actor friend who after hearing some of my stories said: “I’m so sorry dude, it sounds as rough being a Canadian in Hong Kong, as it is being a Mexican in Hollywood…”
— Other film work includes discovering a corpse in Baby Blue (Theo van Gogh, 2001), acting as news anchor man in Timbuktu (David Schramm, 2007) and – again, fulfilling stereotypes – 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). Unfortunately this kind of work largely dried up since a director friend who failed at casting me for a part said: “I’m so sorry dude, the producers think you’re too old and fat…”
— Happily, my body-type still works for voice-overs. Historically, I did voice-overs for the film Phileine zegt sorry (Robert Jan Westdijk, 2003) and an international GapKids commercial (‘How about the Boys?’). More recently, I’ve done various in-house productions for Comedy Central.
DOORMAN (1992-4)
—My first job in Amsterdam was as ‘portier’ at the Melkweg. Working the door gave me a solid insider view of how Amsterdam and its citizenry function. I also learned how to tear tickets without getting paper cuts, and to sensitively listen to the rambling stories of aggressive drunks. I soon realised that these drunks were mostly just frustrated from being unequipped with the skills to properly tell their stories. So I began to help them cut to the chase (while inching them closer to where my officially large colleagues were standing). In general, my door experience helped me become the ‘people person’ I am today. And a few of the techniques I learned there, I still occasionally apply on writers who are late with their deadlines, or clients who are slow with their payments. But no worries: these are purely psychological techniques. Heh-heh.
