Alec Stevens was born in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil where his father, a USAF officer stationed in various parts of the world, was on military assignment.

At age twenty, Stevens began his career as a professional illustrator for magazines, books, and newspapers and also as an artist/writer for comics and graphic novels.

His work for the former includes a fourteen-year stint as a contributing artist to The New York Times Book Review, as well as for The New Yorker, Tower Records's Pulse!

His comics work includes literary adaptations (Wilde, Lovecraft, Dinesen, Dostoevsky, Reymont, and Jan Neruda) for Fantagraphics Books, Heavy Metal Magazine, and Kitchen Sink Press.

In 1993 he illustrated "A Tale of Two Cities" as part of the "Worlds' End" story arc in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series.