{"title":"Steven Heighton","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the poignant and lyrical works of Steven Heighton, celebrated for his evocative poetry, short stories, and novels. Delve into themes of love, loss, and the human condition.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"afterlands-book-steven-heighton-9780618773411","title":"Afterlands","description":"In 1871 off the coast of Greenland, 19 men, women, and children, cast adrift on an ice floe from their foundering ship, the Arctic explorer Polaris, endured a six-month winter ordeal before finally being rescued the following spring. In Afterlands, Heighton provocatively fills in the blanks of the documented history of this event.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49530635157777,"sku":"CIN061877341XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52736028606737,"sku":"NIN9780618773411","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/061877341X.jpg?v=1751008779"},{"product_id":"flight-paths-of-the-emperor-book-steven-heighton-9781862070011","title":"Flight Paths of the Emperor","description":"This selection of 14 short stories explores Japan and the cultural differences between East and West as witnessed by a young traveller working and studying there. Steven Heighton is the author of \"Flight Paths of the Emperor\" and \"On Earth As It Is\".","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49564719677713,"sku":"GOR004903092","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49929238085905,"sku":"GOR012242082","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50657646444817,"sku":"GOR012510948","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1862070016.jpg?v=1751314111"},{"product_id":"reaching-mithymna-book-steven-heighton-9781771963763","title":"Reaching Mithymna","description":"A poets firsthand account of a month volunteering on the frontlines of the Syrian refugee crisis.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49741517160721,"sku":"NGR9781771963763","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51110257000721,"sku":"CIN177196376XA","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51417708200209,"sku":"CIN177196376XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52326465306897,"sku":"GOR011105088","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52689547002129,"sku":"NLS9781771963763","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53493712158993,"sku":"NIN9781771963763","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/177196376X.jpg?v=1750994128"},{"product_id":"instructions-for-the-drowning-book-steven-heighton-9781771965354","title":"Instructions for the Drowning","description":"CA","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49743079506193,"sku":"NGR9781771965354","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49797446533393,"sku":"CIN1771965355VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51051513250065,"sku":"NIN9781771965354","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52671452905745,"sku":"NLS9781771965354","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1771965355.jpg?v=1750994131"},{"product_id":"songbook-book-steven-heighton-9781770417717","title":"Songbook","description":"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 second album. Known first as a poet, Heighton had always held that 'music and poetry are two words for the same thing.' As in his writing, in Songbook Heighton moves fluidly between genres and subjects, from political songs like 'The Butcher's Bill,' about the carelessness of nations sending their youth to war, to reimagining the myth of Orpheus ('I'll hold my breath the whole way down \/ And find your soul in the undertown') and blues tunes like 'Last Living Woman Alive,' and a tribute to the late John Prine, the 'Buddha of song.' With the chords accompanying the lyrics, readers and musicians have the ability to bring the songs to life with their own interpretations. The music in Songbook was the final work of Heighton's life, and it is not only a gift to have his lyrics and chords, but an invitation from Heighton himself, challenging his readers to answer the call and keep singing along.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753914147089,"sku":"NGR9781770417717","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51050922934545,"sku":"NIN9781770417717","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1770417710.jpg?v=1751090635"},{"product_id":"stray-and-the-strangers-book-steven-heighton-9781773063812","title":"The Stray and the Strangers","description":"\u003cp\u003eBased on a true story, a stray dog befriends an orphan boy in a refugee camp on a Greek island.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOne 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 that is like, and she follows them as they are taken to a makeshift refugee camp. There she comes to trust a bearded man, an aid worker, and gradually settles into a contented routine. Kanella grows healthy and confident. She has a job now -- to keep watch over the people in her camp.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOne day, a little boy arrives and does not leave like the others. He seems to have no family and, like Kanella, he is taken in by the workers. He sleeps on a cot in the food hut, and Kanella keeps him warm and calm. When two new adults come to the camp. Kanella is ready to defend the boy from them, until she is pulled away by the bearded man. They are the boy's parents, and now he must go with them.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEventually, the camp is dismantled, and Kanella finds herself homeless again. Until one night, huddled in the cold, she awakens to see two bright lights shining in her eyes -- the headlights of a car. The bearded man has come back for her, and soon Kanella is on a journey, too, to a new home of her own.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eKey Text Features\u003cbr\u003e maps\u003cbr\u003e illustrations\u003cbr\u003e author's note\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCorrelates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.6\u003cbr\u003e Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49778483069201,"sku":"CIN1773063812G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50335199133969,"sku":"GOR013932094","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51049298985233,"sku":"NIN9781773063812","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1773063812.jpg?v=1769684454"},{"product_id":"shadow-boxer-book-steven-heighton-9780618139330","title":"The Shadow Boxer","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the story of Sevigne Torrins, poet and boxer, who sets out to make it in the world but whose sexual and professional misadventures take him from a demanding, muscular boyhood on the shores of Lake Superior to the trendy, bohemian life of Toronto and even to Egypt.\u003cbr\u003e In the tradition of such classics as LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL and JUDE THE OBSCURE, THE SHADOW BOXER is that rarest of contemporary performances, an ambitious, unabashedly romantic story about an exposed soul determined to live life to the hilt. Only a writer of Steven Heighton's extraordinary gifts could pull it off with such unsentimental passion and literary grace.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49911146578193,"sku":"CIN0618139338G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52736066257169,"sku":"NIN9780618139330","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52976831725841,"sku":"CIN0618139338A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0618139338.jpg?v=1751262033"},{"product_id":"flight-paths-of-the-emperor-book-steven-heighton-9781862071414","title":"Flight Paths of the Emperor","description":"Beautiful and polished as a Japanese proverb, these fourteen stories explore Japan and the cultural differences between East and West as witnessed by a young traveller working and studying there.   'It is, in one bite, a brilliant portrait of separate cultures, of family politics and mess, of the sniping, busting and tentative mending of a marriage, of self-deceit and self-understanding. The writing is molten, quixotic and precise.' Scotland on Sunday","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50142438424849,"sku":"GOR010404582","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51593277899025,"sku":"GOR003659154","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1862071411.jpg?v=1751439092"},{"product_id":"the-dead-are-more-visible-book-steven-heighton-9780307397416","title":"The Dead Are More Visible","description":"An astoundingly original and tightly curated collection of stories from the award-winning author of \u003cb\u003eEvery Lost Country\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003cb\u003eAfterlands\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is remarkably easy to accept Al Purdy's assertion that Steven Heighton--renowned for his craftsmanship, risk-taking, insight and range--is one of the best writers of his generation, maybe the best. \u003cb\u003eThe Dead Are More Visible\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ehighlights his strengths at writing fiction that does not sacrifice humour, depth and emotion for the sake of brevity. These 11 profoundly moving and finely crafted stories encapsulate wildly divergent themes of love and loss, containment and exclusion. In the title story, a parks \u0026amp; rec worker faces an assailant who does not leave the altercation intact. A medical researcher and his claustrophobic fianc e are locked in the trunk of their car after a failed carjacking (the thief can't drive standard). A young woman enters a pharmaceutical trial in the outer reaches of suburbia and slips between sleeping and waking with increasingly alarming ease. Pairing the cultural acuity of \u003ci\u003eLost in Translation \u003c\/i\u003ewith the compassion and reach of \u003cb\u003eThe World According to Garp\u003c\/b\u003e, Heighton breathes new life into the short story, a genre that is finally coming into its own.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50348314657041,"sku":"CIN0307397416G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0307397416.jpg?v=1750941758"},{"product_id":"afterlands-book-steven-heighton-9780618139347","title":"Afterlands","description":"In 1871 off the coast of Greenland, 19 men, women, and children, cast adrift on an ice floe from their foundering ship, the Arctic explorer Polaris, endured a six-month winter ordeal before finally being rescued the following spring. In Afterlands, Heighton provocatively fills in the blanks of the documented history of this event.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50359678468369,"sku":"CIN0618139346A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52003637821713,"sku":"CIN0618139346VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52816565960977,"sku":"CIN0618139346G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0618139346.jpg?v=1767175775"},{"product_id":"waking-comes-late-book-steven-heighton-9781487000936","title":"The Waking Comes Late","description":"2016 Governor General's Literary Award Winner  2017 Raymond Souster Award Finalist  Governor General’s Literary Award finalist and bestselling author Steven Heighton returns with a collection of laments and celebrations that reflect on our struggle to believe in the future of a world that continues to disappoint us. The poet challenges the boundaries of sleep and even death in these meditations on what lies just beneath the surface of contemporary life. These are poems that trouble over the idea of failure even as they continually recommit to the present moment. This is fierce music performed in a minor key.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50386184274193,"sku":"CIN1487000936A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50386188468497,"sku":"CIN1487000936G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1487000936.jpg?v=1751210689"},{"product_id":"workbook-book-steven-heighton-9781550229370","title":"Workbook","description":"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 created product, at once about living life and the writing life. I stick to a form that bluntly admits its own limitation and partiality and makes a virtue of both things, Heighton writes in his foreword, a form that lodges no claim to encyclopedic completeness, balance, or conclusive truth. At times, this form (I'm going to call it the memo) is a hybrid of the epigram and the pr cis, or of the aphorism and the abstract, the maxim and the debater's initial be-it-resolved. At other times it's a meditation in the Aurelian sense, a dispatch-to-self that aspires to address other selves -- readers -- as well. It's in these very aspirations, reaching both back into and forward in time -- and, ultimately, outside of the pages of the book itself -- that Heighton offers perhaps the freshest, most provocative picture of what it means to create the literature of the modern world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50461041754385,"sku":"CIN1550229370G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1550229370.jpg?v=1750991279"},{"product_id":"afterlands-book-steven-heighton-9780241143384","title":"Afterlands","description":"It is 1871 and a thwarted voyage across uncharted waters to plant the American flag at the North Pole has cast nineteen survivors adrift on an ice floe off the coast of Greenland. \"Afterlands\" is the story of this small society of castaways, one white and one black American, five Germans, a Dane, a Swede, an Englishman, and two Inuit families as they struggle with the elements and, increasingly, with each other. While suffering the deadly hardships of cold and hunger, they succumb to equally destructive suspicions, mutiny, hunger-induced delusions and unrequited longings, and their ordeal is one that will cast a shadow over the rest of their lives...Based on a true story and suffusing the drama of Arctic survival with a harrowing psychological intensity, \"Afterlands\" is a gripping, beautiful novel that explores allegiance and betrayal, the sacrifices needed for survival, and the ultimate cost of loyalty.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51558363398417,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51558363627793,"sku":"GOR006462447","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53620844429585,"sku":"GOR004100548","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0241143381.jpg?v=1751436134"},{"product_id":"sacred-rage-book-steven-heighton-9781771966498","title":"Sacred Rage","description":"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 Heighton  In the years before his unexpected death, Steven Heighton wrote to his longtime editor John Metcalf to say that he understood that the short story marked his most important contribution to literature, and that “after the novels, rereading and writing short stories again felt like returning home.” In the fifteen stories taken from across his four collections, Sacred Rage offers us Heighton as the moral explorer of the global suburbs, as chronicler of our innermost stories of love and fear, sleeping and waking, of a rebel “unabashedly devoted to the old pursuit,” as he once called it, “of truth and beauty.” These are stories of grace and the lack of it; of elegy and requiem; of hope and care in a world where these seem increasingly alien, stories by one of our most sharp-eyed and generous writers, whether you’re discovering them for the first time, or once again.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51630102151441,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51630102380817,"sku":"NGR9781771966498","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51840166363409,"sku":"NIN9781771966498","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52659341852945,"sku":"NLS9781771966498","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1771966491.jpg?v=1751465679"},{"product_id":"address-book-book-steven-heighton-9780887846984","title":"The Address Book","description":"Governor General's Award-finalist Steven Heighton employs his signature blend of emotional fierceness and linguistic beauty to tap into \"This whim \/ against what drifts to dark.\" The Address Book is a collection of remarkably well-crafted love letters, letters of loss, and lyrical moments of complaint and redress where music and intelligence are the last guard against wind walls of real grief. Elegiac, angry, tender, and brazenly heart-felt, these poems achieve their effect through total conviction; a complete immersion in the rich palette of human emotions — comfortable and otherwise. The collection's second half includes the author's versions from Western poetry's sustaining giants, including Beaudelaire, Rimbaud, Sappho, Catullus, Homer, and Rilke.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52150553149713,"sku":"NLS9780887846984","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740503634193,"sku":"NIN9780887846984","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780887846984.jpg?v=1757610474"},{"product_id":"patient-frame-book-steven-heighton-9780887849527","title":"Patient Frame","description":"Governor General's Literary Award finalist and bestselling author Steven Heighton's considerable dramatic lyric powers reach a new sophistication and intensity in his astonishing collection Patient Frame. From the court of Medici to the My Lai massacre; from love for a daughter and mother, through nightmare and displacement, to moments of painful acceptance; from erotic passion to situations of deep moral failure, these poems are part of an ongoing search, a scanning of our human horizons for moments of lasting value. Heighton's work has long shown a resolve to achieve some viable rapprochement between the mind's cold structures and the earthbound drives of the body.    Dynamic, vigorous, tender poems as engaged with the moment as they are with traditions of East and West. Patient Frame brings together more of Heighton's vital translations of poets as diverse as Jorge Luis Borges and Horace.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52583109820689,"sku":"NLS9780887849527","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53186073198865,"sku":"NIN9780887849527","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780887849527.jpg?v=1761045960"},{"product_id":"ecstasy-of-skeptics-book-steven-heighton-9780887845604","title":"The Ecstasy of Skeptics","description":"In The Ecstasy of Skeptics Steven Heighton searches for the heart's true centre somewhere between the polarized spheres of order and anarchy, of logic and the erotic, of Apollo and Dionysus.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52680066695441,"sku":"NLS9780887845604","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780887845604.jpg?v=1762312195"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-steven-heighton.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}