Steven Heighton is the author of the novel Afterlands, published in 2005 in Canada and in 2006 in the USA, where it was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Editions have also appeared in Britain and Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands. The book has recently been optioned for film. He has also published The Shadow Boxer—a Canadian bestseller and a Publishers’ Weekly Book of the Year for 2002—which appeared in five countries. His other fiction books are the story collections Flight Paths of the Emperor and On earth as it is, while his poetry collections include The Ecstasy of Skeptics and The Address Book.

His fiction and poetry have been translated into nine languages, have appeared in London Review of Books, Tin House, Poetry, Brick, The Independent, London Magazine, Malahat Review, Agni, The Walrus, Poetry London and Revue Europe, have been internationally anthologised (Best English Stories, Best of Best English Stories, The Minerva Book of Stories and others) and have been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Journey Prize, and Britain’s W.H. Smith Award. Heighton has received the Lampert Award, The Petra Kenney Prize, the Air Canada Award, and gold medals for fiction and for poetry in the National Magazine Awards. He has been the writer-in-residence at Concordia University; at Massey College, U of T; and at McArthur College, Queen's University. He has also taught at the Summer Literary Seminars in St Petersburg, Russia. In 2009 he will be the writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa. He lives with his family in Kingston, Ontario.