Steven Heighton

Provides a fictional chronicle of the real-life ordeal of nineteen men, women, and children cast adrift on an ice floe off the coast of Greenland in 1871 as they struggle with the harsh elements and with each other. By the author of The Shadow Boxer. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

Afterlands

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 writers such as Herman Melville, Leonard Cohen, Kate Chopin, and Thich Nhat Hanh, Heighton considers the influence of illusions on creativity, art, and society. This meditation on language and philosophy reveals the virtues of being disillusioned and, perhaps, the path to freedom.

The Virtues of Disillusionment

Michael Murphy

Daniel Wolff

John Kinsella

Alex Stein

Judith Hermann

Yoram Kaniuk

Benjamin Paloff

Gary Fincke

Christopher Sorrentino

Ruth Curry

Marion Wyce

Jesse Goolsby

Renee Ashley

Cassie Hay

Joyce Hinnefeld

Sean McConnell

Geoffrey Nutter

Michael Copperman

Krzysztof Jaworski

Caleb Curtiss

Anthony Berris

Madeleine Beckman

Wendy Burk

Michela Costello

Margot Dembo

Suzanna Hopcroft

Tedi Mills

Anne McPeak

Drew Riley

Ryan Romine

Peter Shippy

William Zander

The Rogue Idea

Tess Fragoulis

Helen Tsiriotakis

Everything that any one of us can do to help or hinder his fellow man has been done, at least once, by a Greek. —Margaret Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian Greece is the Western world's cultural birthplace. Think Homer's Iliad and Plato's philosophy. Think Nikos Kazantzakis and George Seferis. Think contemporary Greek-Canadian writers. Musings is a selection of some of the best Greek-Canadian literature, and includes stories and poems by Pan Bouyoucas, Margaret Christakos, Steven Heighton, Stavros Tsimicalis, and many others. Here is a vibrant community with many voices—experimental fiction, traditional storytelling, crisp poetry—anthologized for the first time. Some speak to the various faces of Greece, some speak to the immigrant experience, all speak to our common human experience. Celebrate the musings of the new Greek-Canadian literature! Tess Fragoulis was born in Greece and is the grand-daughter of the acclaimed Cretan writer, Constantine Fragoulis. She is the author of Stories to Hide from Your Mother and Ariadne's Dream.Steven Heighton's work has been translated into several languages and has been nominated for the Governor General's Award, the Trillium Award, and Britain's W.H. Smith Award. His mother's family came from Tripoli, in Peloponnesus. Helen Tsiriotakis is a first-generation Greek-Canadian of Cretan heritage. Her first collection of poetry, A House of White Rooms, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

An Anthology of Greek-Canadian Literature

Musings

In 1872, the USS Polaris sailed for the Arctic on a mission to hoist the U.S. flag at the North Pole. But the expedition was a failure, and half of the party – nineteen men, women and children of different nationalities–were cast adrift on an ice floe off the coast of Ellesmere Island, where they endured six desperate months of starvation, bloodshed and other horrors. Afterlands, a profoundly moving and gripping book, takes characters drawn from history and transforms their experiences into an absorbing tale of unrequited love, unsettled scores and the high cost of loyalty. The novel begins in 1876, when three of the survivors – George Tyson, Tukulito and Roland Kruger–are uneasily reunited four years after they were rescued from the ice. They are still inextricably connected by their ordeal–and Tyson has recently published an account of their shattering experiences which casts Kruger as a spy and villain, and disgraces Tukulito as well. What happened on the ice, as Afterlands explores, was far more complex. The heart of the book moves between Tyson’s diaries and a riveting narrative of Arctic survival. From the moment they are set adrift, and even before, Kruger and Tyson seem destined to clash: Kruger is an intelligent individualist, an outsider who refuses to be loyal to any one country; Tyson, meanwhile, is a flawed but sometimes brilliant leader, a man who needs to constantly be testing himself against the world. Brave but also insecure, he is unable to stop the German contingent of his party from banding together under their national flag in an armed near-mutiny on the drifting ice. The third key character in this book, Tukulito, was the Arctic’s first professional interpreter. Known also as Hannah, she moves between two worlds: expert at gutting a seal, she has also had tea with Queen Victoria. Her different roles – translator, mother, mender, marksman – keep the party from disaster, as suspicion and violence increase. And the quiet, impossible passion Kruger feels for her almost redeems their lives in a frozen hell. But Afterlands is also a novel about what follows the life-changing event: the long shadow it casts, as well as the conflicting stories that compete to become historical record. Back in the world, the protagonists will experience various degrees of tragedy. Tukulito’s is perhaps the most personal, while Tyson, who sought only to gain the world’s esteem, is disgraced by later failure. Kruger, meanwhile, attempts to disappear into Mexico, again seeking a place beyond “the colonels of the world” – but he finds himself, perhaps inevitably, drawn once more into the unending conflicts between nations, between peoples. This novel is a triumph of storytelling from one of Canada’s most acclaimed writers. Gripping and beautiful, it is a scintillating exploration of the extremes of human experience. Afterlands brilliantly examines both a devastating encounter with the natural world and the unrelenting demands of the human heart.

Sophie Book, part of a climbing expedition, is sitting on the border watching the sunset over Tibet when she spots a group of Tibetan refugees being pursued by Chinese borderguards and fleeing toward her up the mountain. When the shooting starts, her father rushes towards the ensuing melee. The surviving Tibetan refugees are captured just short of the border and the story follows the expedition leader as he makes his way up the summit, Sophie in pursuit of her father, and the fugitives as they try to escape their captors.

Every Lost Country

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 ruins Elias 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 aftermath, exhausted by nightmares, Elias is sent to Cyprus to recover, where he attempts to find comfort in the arms of Eylül, a beautiful Turkish journalist. But the lovers’ reprieve ends in a moment of shocking brutality that drives Elias into Varosha, once a popular Greek-Cypriot resort town, abandoned since the Turkish invasion of 1974. Hidden in the lush, overgrown ruins is a community of exiles and refugees living resourcefully but comfortably. Thanks to the cheerfully corrupt Colonel Kaya, who turns a blind eye, they live under the radar of the Turkish authorities. As he begins to heal, Elias finds himself drawn to the enigmatic and secretive Kaiti while he learns at last to “simply belong.” But just when it seems he has found sanctuary, events he himself set in motion have already begun to endanger it.

The Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep

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 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. One 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. Eventually, 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. Key Text Features maps illustrations author's note Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.6 Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.

The Stray and the Strangers

Based on a true story, a stray dog befriends an orphan boy in a refugee camp on a Greek island.

Foreign Ghosts

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.

The Waking Comes Late

Poet-boxer Sevigne Torrins struggle to find his place in the world is transformed by a series of professional and sexual misadventures that take him from his youth on the shores of Lake Superior, to the trendy, bohemian life of Toronto, to Egypt. Original.

A Novel

The Shadow Boxer

FINALIST FOR THE 2020 HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION “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 Jury In the fall of 2015, Steven Heighton made an overnight decision to travel to the frontlines of the Syrian refugee crisis in Greece and enlist as a volunteer. He arrived on the isle of Lesvos with a duffel bag and a dubious grasp of Greek, his mother's native tongue, and worked on the landing beaches and in OXY-—a jerrybuilt, ad hoc transit camp providing simple meals, dry clothes, and a brief rest to refugees after their crossing from Turkey. In a town deserted by the tourists that had been its lifeblood, Heighton-—alongside the exhausted locals and under-equipped international aid workers—-found himself thrown into emergency roles for which he was woefully unqualified. From the brief reprieves of volunteer-refugee soccer matches to the riots of Camp Moria, Reaching Mithymna is a firsthand account of the crisis and an engaged exploration of the borders that divide us and the ties that bind.

Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos

Reaching Mithymna

Steven Heighton

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