The sad news has just reached us of the sudden passing of Charles Christian, IS&T’s founder, last October. Charles created IS&T as a platform for new poetry and short prose, and experimental work in digital media in 2007. Charles ran the site single-handedly, until he took on Helen Ivory as Deputy Editor in 2010.
A trained barrister, he is described as The Godfather of Legal Technology and prior to being at the forefront of digital poetry publishing, he founded The Orange Rag – now the legal sector’s leading global source of legal tech news. Caroline Hill, the Orange Rag’s current Editor in Chief writes: ‘Charles founded the Orange Rag in 1995, well before most lawyers had their own computer. One of the stories in the first-ever Orange Rag newsletters – then in print only – was about a new service aimed at law firms that wanted to establish a presence on the internet.’
Latterly Charles Christian has books on the supernatural and folklore, and he scripted and presented the Weird Tales Show videos on YouTube and for four-and-a-half years ran the Weird Tales Radio Show which he did with his trademark dry wit and his sharp and curious mind. His website Urban Fantasist is testament to his creative industry : urbanfantasist.com
Charles’s vision of publishing something new every day lives on at IS&T. He was clear that there should be as little scrolling as possible; that every published thing should sit in the middle of a screen, which we still try to do As a digital platform with a good social media presence we are accessible to anybody with an internet connection. Charles saw this coming and started us off. We thank you and we praise you, Charles Christian.