Steven Heighton has been described by Al Purdy as “One of the best writers of his generation, maybe the best.” His novel Afterlands (Knopf 2005) was described in the New York Times as “a magnificent novel . . . a novel of big ideas and beautiful writing. In 2000 he published The Shadow Boxer (Knopf), a novel which became a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year. Other books include The Address Book, Flight Paths of the Emperor, and The Ecstasy of Skeptics. His work has been internationally anthologised, translated into nine languages, and nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Journey Prize, and Britain’s W.H. Smith Award. He has received the Air Canada Prize, the Gerald Lampert Award, Gold Medals for fiction and for poetry in the National Magazine Awards, and the Petra Kenney Prize. Heighton has taught fiction and poetry at the May Studios in Banff and the Booming Ground workshop at UBC, and has been writer in residence at Concordia University and Massey College at the University of Toronto.