Steven Heighton

The Governor General's Award-winning author of eighteen books—-novels, poetry, stories, essays, memoir—Steven
Heighton for thirty years has been exploring new genres, new ideas, new voices. The New York Times said of him, “He is an experienced adventurer in literary form... boldness and risk-taking infuse his work.” So his just-released first album, The Devil’s Share, might seem the latest symptom of his creative restlessness. In fact, it’s a return home, a making good on the sort of promise you vow to yourself in your early years without knowing you’ve done it.

Heighton began his creative life as an aspiring songwriter, busking his way around Australia and Europe, playing small gigs, but before long he was devoting himself to writing books—poetry at first, his lyrics morphing and learning to accompany themselves, to make their own music, as the words of a poem must do.

In 2010, while playing recreational hockey, he suffered a laryngeal fracture, or crushed voicebox. ER doctor to mute, scared patient: “You might never talk normally again. Also, you’ll probably never sing. Do you sing?” That might have been the necessary jolt that drove him back to songwriting (following a period of silent convalescence). After his poetry book The Waking Comes Late received the 2016 Governor General’s Award, songs began to come too. It was as if that milestone had confirmed that his apprenticeship was over and it was time to take his poetry back to its roots.