Stephen Embleton was born in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and is a resident in Oxford, after his 2022 academic fellowship at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Stephen was awarded the Best Novella by an African in the 7th Nommo Awards presented in person at Glasgow WorldCon in August 2024 for his Sauúti-based novella, Undulation. Stephen was awarded a literary grant by the Royal Literary Fund in 2024, providing financial assistance to write while recognising the literary merit of his body of work and literature-related activities. His first short story was published in 2015 in the IMAGINE AFRICA 500 speculative fiction anthology, followed by the 2016 Edition of Aké Review, the debut edition of Enkare Review 2017 and more.

He is a charter member of the African Speculative Fiction Society and its Nommo Awards initiative. His then unpublished fantasy novel, Bones & Runes, was a finalist in the 2021 James Currey Prize for African Literature, and first published in the UK in 2022. He is one of the ten African writers making up the Sauúti Collective—the Afro-centric fantasy and speculative fiction shared-world. Stephen's academic essay, "Cosmologies and Languages Building Africanfuturism", appears in the 2024 Bloomsbury essay collection Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction.