A Globe 100 Best Book of 2025 • A Globe and Mail Fall Book of 2025"A writer only feels like a writer when in the act. And the will, I said, is never enough . . . Where does inspiration, that sacred rage, originate? Maybe it’s just a matter of stubbornly starting something new and writing your way into the slot."—Steven HeightonIn the years before his unexpected death, Steven Heighton wrote to his longtime editor John Metca...

This collection of new and previously published poems by Steven Heighton, author of the Governor General’s Literary Award winner The Waking Comes Late**, showcases a defining lyric poet of his generation.**Selected Poems 1983–2020 is Steven Heighton’s seventh volume of poetry and the first since his Governor General’s Literary Award–winning collection, The Waking Comes Late. Incorporating a grouping of previously unpublis...

FINALIST FOR THE 2020 HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION • A New York Times New & Noteworthy Book • A CBC Best Nonfiction Book of 2020 • A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book for 2020“Combining his poetic sensibilities and storytelling skills with a documentarian’s eye, [Heighton] has created a wrenching narrative.”—2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction JuryIn the fall of 2015, Steven Heighton made ...

Based on a true story, a stray dog befriends an orphan boy in a refugee camp on a Greek island.The fishermen on Lesvos call her Kanella because of her cinnamon color. She’s a scrawny, nervous stray — easily intimidated by the harbor cats and the other dogs that compete for handouts on the pier.One spring day a dinghy filled with weary, desperate strangers comes to shore. Other boats follow, laden with refugees who are homeless and hungry. Kanella knows what...

"A magnificent novel" based on the 1872 Polaris expedition that left crewmembers marooned on an ice floe off the coast of Greenland ( The New York Times Book Review).It is 1871. Nineteen men, women, and children, hailing from the United States, Germany, Denmark, England, and Sweden, and including two Inuit families, set out on Arctic explorer USS Polaris. But their voyage soon goes wrong. The ship founders, leaving its passengers adrift o...

From internationally acclaimed and Governor General’s Award-winning author Steven Heighton comes a passionate novel of buried secrets, the repercussions of war and finding love among the ruinsElias Trifannis is desperate to belong somewhere. To make his dying ex-cop father happy, he joins the military—but in Afghanistan, by the time he realizes his last-minute bid for connection was a terrible mistake, it’s too late and a tragedy has occurred.In the aftermat...

From the award-winning, multi-genre author and musician Steven Heighton, Songbook brings together Heighton’s lyrics and music for the first time in a single volume, including his final songs, which have never been heard or seen until now. When Steven Heighton died suddenly of cancer in 2022, he was in the middle of an intensely creative period of songwriting. He released his first album of original material, The Devil’s Share, in 2021 and was preparing to record his secon...

“... without a doubt the greatest poet English Canada has ever produced.”—Dennis Lee“A hundred years from now, one of the few Canadian poets whose work will still be read will be Al Purdy.”—Maclean’sAl Purdy (1918–2000), known as Canada’s unofficial poet laureate, wrote poetry that anyone could read. Having come from working-class roots with little in terms of formal education, he wrote in a colloquial style and with a rowdy yet sensitive poetic per...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023 • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • One of the Globe 100's Best Books of 2023“To say Heighton is an immensely talented writer is true enough but insufficient ... As good a writer as Canada has ever produced.”—National PostThe unforgettable last collection by the bestselling author of The Shadow BoxerA man ...

Most people go through life chasing illusions of success, fame, wealth, happiness, and few things are more painful than the reality-revealing loss of an illusion. But if illusions are negative, why is the opposite, being disillusioned, also negative? In this essay based on his inaugural writer-in-residence lecture at Athabasca University, internationally acclaimed writer Steven Heighton mathematically evaluates the paradox of disillusionment and the negative aspects of hope. Drawing on wri...

Since selections first appeared in the New Quarterly and the National Post as part of “The Afterword,” Steven Heighton’s memos and dispatches to himself — a writer’s pointed, cutting take on his own work and the work of writing — have been tweeted and retweeted, discussed and tacked to bulletin boards everywhere. Coalesced, completed, and collected here for the first time, a wholly new kind of book has emerged, one that’s as much about creative process as it is about crea...

“To say Heighton is an immensely talented writer is true enough but insufficient ... As good a writer as Canada has ever produced.” — National PostThe unforgettable last collection by the bestselling author of The Shadow BoxerA man recalls his father's advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles when the time comes to use it. A wife’s good deed leaves a couple vulnerable at the moment when they’re most in need o...