He is the author of On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley (Cambridge UP). From 2001-02 Stephens was a Rockefeller Fellow at the Center for International Studies, University of North Carolina. As a journalist, he has published in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Pacific News Service, jahworks.org and many other forums. He was an award-winning songwriter for Elouise Burrell in Austin during the mid-1980s.