Jordan Stratford


Jordan Stratford is a Canadian author of children's fiction. He has two children with his wife Zandra Stratford.

Life

In 2005, he was ordained a gnostic priest in the Apostolic Johannite Church, having received a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from St. Raphael the Archangel Theological Seminary. He has written extensively on gnosticism as a modern spiritual practice and on the history of alchemy.
He has worked as an advertising creative director, filmmaker, screenwriter, instructor at Vancouver Film School and writer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
He cites poet Robin Skelton as an influence.

Steampunk and Wollstonecraft

Jordan Stratford has been involved in steampunk for many years. He co-founded the Victoria Steam Expo, the first steampunk art exhibition in Canada. Vintage Tomorrows, a documentary about the movement, interviewed him at the 2012 event, which he described as "an interactive art experience" The film quotes him encouraging people to engage with technology, make it, break it, and reinvent it. CNET described his children's series, the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency novels, as steampunk plus Jane Austen.
He is the author of the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency series, a pro-math and science adventure series for girls 8-12. The first book was funded by a Kickstarter campaign that soon reached multiples of its target $4000, being promoted on Wired and io9 The series was recognized by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The first book in the series, The Case of the Missing Moonstone, has sold 40,000 copies worldwide, and was translated into Russian, German and Turkish; it was a finalist for the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize and the Silver Birch Award. The second novel in the series, The Case of the Girl In Grey, was released in January 2016, with The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals in January 2017.

Books

Children's books

All of the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency books are illustrated by Kelly Murphy. The overall title refers to Mary Wollstonecraft, and the two protagonists are based on Mary Shelley and Ada Lovelace.