According to Stoneking's own biographical notes, his early years were spent growing up on military bases around the United States, including Randolph Field (Texas) and Fort Slocum (New York).
"The drama in which the screenwriter, playwright, poet is occupied is the endless struggle between panic and pure anxiety, between the drive for self-preservation and the desire not to falsify the evidence.
Whilst these two 'wants' may seem to be eternally at odds with one another, the point is not to surrender one in favour of the other bit to manage and exploit the dynamic tension inherent in the conflict."
His ties to teaching and pedagogy motivated him to spend four years at Papunya Aboriginal Settlement in the Northern Territory, during which time he collected stories for use in a bilingual reading program.
[7] Stoneking has published his poems in magazines around Australia, and was also active in the performance poetry movement, which included fellow poets Pi O, Amanda Stewart and Jas H. Duke.
He also wrote a script for one of the episodes of Mission: Impossible (1988 TV series), which was broadcast during that show's two year revival (1988–1990).