Steven Heighton


Steven Heighton was a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and singer-songwriter. He is the author of eighteen books, including three short story collections, four novels, and seven poetry collections. His last work was Selected Poems 1983-2020 and an album, The Devil's Share.
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Life and work

Heighton was born in Toronto, Ontario, and grew up there and in Red Lake, in northern Ontario. He travelled and worked in western Canada and Australia after high school, got a BA and MA from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and then travelled and worked for two years in Asia before settling back in Kingston and starting to write, at first part-time and eventually full-time.
Heighton's most recent books are the novel The Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep, the Governor General's Award-winning poetry collection The Waking Comes Late, and the Trillium Award finalist The Dead Are More Visible. Heighton is also the author of the novel Afterlands, which appeared in six countries and was cited on best of year lists in ten publications in Canada, the US, and Britain. The book is in pre-production for film. Heighton's debut novel, The Shadow Boxer, a story about a young poet-boxer and his struggles growing up, also appeared in five countries.
His work has been translated into ten languages and widely anthologised. He won the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 2016. His books have been nominated for the Governor General's Award, the Trillium Award, the Journey Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and Britain's W.H. Smith Award. He received the Gerald Lampert Award, four gold and one silver award for fiction and for poetry in the National Magazine Awards, the Air Canada Award, the P.K. Page Award, the K.M. Hunter Award, and the Petra Kenney Prize. Flight Paths of the Emperor has been listed at Amazon.ca as one of the ten best Canadian short story collections and has been published in Britain by Granta Books.
Heighton has been the writer-in-residence at McGill University, Queen's, Concordia, the University of Ottawa, and Massey College at the University of Toronto. He has also led writing workshops at the Summer Literary Seminars in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the May Studios at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Writing with Style at the Banff Centre, and the Sage Hill Writing Experience in Blackstrap Lake, Saskatchewan
His nonfiction book Reaching Mithymna: Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos was shortlisted for the 2020 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
In April 2021, Heighton released an album of eleven original songs with Wolfe Island Records/CRS Europe. The Devil's Share emerges from "an alchemical bath of blues, rock, folk, country, soul, and Americana." It was recorded at the Post Office Studio, Wolfe Island, Ontario, and produced by Hugh Christopher Brown.
Heighton died on April 19, 2022, at the age of 60 of cancer. He lived in Kingston, Ontario.

Novels

The Shadow Boxer Knopf CanadaAfterlands Knopf CanadaEvery Lost Country Knopf Canada
  • ''The Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep''

Short stories

Flight Paths of the Emperor The Porcupine's QuillOn earth as it is The Porcupine's QuillThe Dead Are More Visible Knopf CanadaInstructions for the Drowning BiblioasisSacred Rage: Selected Stories Biblioasis

Poetry

Foreign Ghosts Oberon PressStalin’s Carnival Quarry PressThe Ecstasy of Skeptics House of Anansi PressThe Address Book House of Anansi PressPatient Frame House of Anansi PressThe Waking Comes Late House of Anansi PressSelected Poems: 1983-2020 House of Anansi Press

Nonfiction

Reaching Mithymna Biblioasis

Essays

The Admen Move on Lhasa: Writing & Culture in a Virtual World House of Anansi PressWorkbook ECW PressThe Virtues of Disillusionment Athabasca University Press

Music

  • ''The Devil's Share''

Anthologies and magazines

  • Best American Mystery Stories
  • 70 Canadian Poets
  • Best American Poetry
  • Finding the Words
  • The Best Canadian Poetry
  • Best Canadian Stories
  • The New Story Writers
  • Best English Short Stories
  • The Minerva Book of Short Stories 5
  • Best of Best English Short Stories 1986-1995
  • The Journey Prize Anthology 4
  • The Literature of Work
  • The Second Gates of Paradise
  • Canadian Short Fiction, second edition
  • Writing Home
  • Turn of the Story
  • Lost Classics
  • The Reader
  • The Notebooks
  • Viewpoints 12
  • The New Canon
  • Literature
  • ''The Exile Book of Canadian Sports Stories''

Prizes and honours

  • 1990 Gerald Lampert Award for best first poetry collection
  • 1991 Prism International Short Story Competition, first prize for "Five Paintings of the New Japan"
  • 1992 Finalist, The Journey Prize
  • 1992 National Magazine Awards gold medal for fiction
  • 1993 Finalist, Trillium Award
  • 1995 Finalist, Governor General's Award for Poetry
  • 2002 Petra Kenney Prize for Poetry
  • 2004 National Magazine Awards gold medal for poetry
  • 2008 National Magazine Awards gold medal for fiction
  • 2010 National Magazine Awards gold medal for fiction
  • 2010 K.M. Hunter Award for literature
  • 2011 National Magazine Awards silver for poetry
  • 2011 P.K. Page Founder's Award
  • 2013 Finalist, Trillium Award
  • 2016 Governor General's Award for Poetry
  • 2019 Finalist, The Moth International Poetry Prize