The Street Kid

Phoenix (aka Stephan Heard) is a fiction writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, and serious thinker. He has written eight full-length novels (including The Street Kid and Contorted Royal), five poetry collections (including the previously published Characters), an experimental novella, the previously published Silent Noise, the previously published Death’s Mirror, one short novel, three plays, an informal philosophical treatise, another philosophical treatise, and two short story collections, among other writings. The Street Kid is Phoenix’s fictional autobiography, or ＂autofiction,＂ in line with writers such as Proust and Knausgaard. The events in the text were filtered through a fictional lens to both dramatize and add credence to Phoenix’s often bizarre and fantastical/spiritual experiences, to make the experience more realist and yet also more powerful. Phoenix is a kid because kids are innocence. Homelessness is used as a metaphor for psychological and spiritual displacement, and yet the beauty of the metaphor allows for themes such as perseverance and determination to make themselves apparent. You will no doubt never meet anyone like The Street Kid, where fantasy and reality, delusion and rationality, blur to strange and profound effects.