Steven Heighton


Steven Heighton is a Canadian novelist, short story writer and poet. He is the author of fourteen books, including three short story collections, four novels and six poetry collections. His most recent book, the novel The Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep, was published in 2017.

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 has 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
Heighton currently lives in Kingston, Ontario.

Novels