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Title and statement of responsibility area
Title proper
Steven Heighton Fonds
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- Source of title proper: Title based on content.
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Fonds
Repository
Reference code
CA RBD MSG 943
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cm of textual records
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Archival description area
Name of creator
(1961-2022)
Biographical history
Steven Heighton was born on August 14, 1961, in Toronto, Ontario.
He was a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and singer-songwriter. He grew up in Toronto and Red Lake, northern Ontario. After finishing high school, he travelled and worked in western Canada and Australia. He graduated from Queen's University (B.A.; M.A.), Kingston, Ontario, and then travelled and worked for two years in Asia before settling back in Kingston and starting to write. Heighton has been the writer-in-residence at McGill University, Queen's University, Concordia University, 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 (2007), the May Studios at the Banff Centre for the Arts (2001), Writing with Style at the Banff Centre, and the Sage Hill Writing Experience in Blackstrap Lake, Saskatchewan (2015 and 2016). He wrote numerous novels, short stories, poetry, nonfiction, essays, and music. His work has been translated into ten languages and widely anthologized. He won the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry in 2016 for his collection “The Waking Comes Late.” His books have been nominated for the Trillium Award (twice), the Journey Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and Britain's W.H. Smith Award (best book of the year). He received the Gerald Lampert Award, four gold and one silver awards for fiction and 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. 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."
He died of cancer on April 19, 2022, in Kingston, Ontario.
Custodial history
Scope and content
The fonds documents Canadian poet and novelist Steven Heighton’s literary career through correspondence with writers and editors as well as material documenting his writing activities. The records contain his literary and professional correspondence between 1994-1995 and 2001-2010, including extensive correspndence with correspondents such as Al Purdy, John Metcalfe, David Helwig, Michael Redhill, George Elliott Clarke, and Judith Cowan . There are also notes, manuscripts, research materials, drafts, and reviews for the following works: The address book (2004), “The stages of J. Gordon Whitehead” (short story, 2002), Afterlands (2005), Patient frame (2010), Every lost country (2010), as well as chapbooks, letterpress books, and essays. There are also reviews for other literary works as well as documents relating to Heighton's writer-in-resident positions.
Notes area
Physical condition
Immediate source of acquisition
Donated by Steven Heighton in two accruals, 2005 and 2010.
Arrangement
Language of material
- English