We are very proud and excited to announce the new Steven Heighton Fellowship, which commences in 2025. The Fellowship was created by the Al Purdy A-frame Association (APAFA) – in collaboration with the Department of English and Creative Writing at Queen’s University and Kingston WritersFest – to provide recipients with a blend of benefits and experiences so unique that it stands apart from any other initiative of its kind in Canada.

Each year, one deserving writer, artist or musician will receive a financial award of $10,000, a six-week residency at the Purdy A-frame, a further week-long residency at Queen’s University in association with its Creative Writing program and, finally, a profiled position at the Kingston WritersFest to be platformed as the Steven Heighton Happening. No other literary Fellowship in Canada can boast such a richly varied and rewarding suite of benefits.

Steven and Al at the A-frame

Steven Heighton was an award-winning writer and artist with a national following who made a particularly profound impact in the Kingston and Prince Edward/Hastings arts scene. He was a frequent guest at the A-frame and a close friend of both Al and Eurithe Purdy. An artistic polymath, Steven published in half a dozen genres and was as talented a musician as he was a poet and writer. Before his untimely passing at age 60 in 2022, Steven produced numerous novels, collections of essays, poetry, memoir, reviews, and short fiction. His debut album, The Devil’s Share was released in 2021. Two posthumous collections, Instructions for Drowning and Songbook: The Lyrics and Music of Steven Heighton, were released in 2023 and 2024. Works of his last decade include the Governor-General’s Literary Award-winning poetry collection, The Waking Comes Late, and the memoir Reaching Mithymna, which was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

“Departures, experiments, tangents, deviations… these are how creative landscapes change. The literary world is rightly attuned to the need to nourish emerging talent. The Heighton Fellowship fosters both emergence and re-emergence. This fellowship is unique in supporting literary creators at any career stage who challenge themselves to pursue heretofore uncharted pathways—in genre, in medium, in mode—as Steve so regularly did. The A-frame and the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Queen’s are committed to providing the space and time for such departures to find their audience and change our world.” — Dr. Sam McKegney, Professor and Head of Department of English Literature & Creative Writing, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, and the author of Carrying the Burden of Peace (2021)

FELLOWSHIP CRITERIA

In a Toronto Star interview Michael Ondaatje talks about authors who write in various forms, calling them “‘amphibious writers, ‘because ‘they swim, they walk,’ metaphorically of course, possessing many talents as poets, musicians, artists. Canada has a lot of them: George Bowering, Steven Heighton, Margaret Atwood.” In correspondence, he says he would also include Canisia Lubrin, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Kyo Maclear, and Kaie Kellough.

While awards for emerging writers have proliferated in Canada and globally in recent decades, the Steven Heighton Fellowship focuses on re-emergence—on writers/artists of any career stage who are moving into uncharted territories of their own creative expression. These are artists ready to make a creative leap (in genre, medium, theme, register), whose exploratory expression refuses to be restrained. The Fellowship is open to writers, artists and musicians.

“The Heighton Fellowship is an amazing and unique initiative which holds so much potential. Poets can be likened to magpies in that we often pick up things that catch our attention, things like paint brushes, video cameras and guitars – as did Steve Heighton. The Heighton Fellowship will go a long way in encouraging poets to continue to experiment and move these other interests, from perhaps the realm of hobby into their artistic practice. Poet as visual artist, poet as filmmaker, poet as song writer, etc. – anything is possible, and the Heighton Fellowship will help make it happen.” — Armand Garnet Ruffo, Author of Treaty# and The Dialogues; Writer-Director of A Windigo Tale, a feature film; and Co-creator of Sounding Thunder: the Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, a musical drama

Full details of the Steven Heighton Fellowship and a Call for Applications were announced at the 2024 Kingston WritersFest event Steven Heighton Happening on Saturday, September 28, 2024.

DETAILS FOR APPLYING

• A brief professional curriculum vitae (max. 2 pages)
• A plan for your residency at the A-frame (max. 2 pages)
• A brief proposal of what you might share with the Queen’s community during your one-week university residency (max. 1 page)
• A letter of reference (if desired by the candidate)
• A 10-20 page sample of recent writing, or another creative example
• Community-based project (1 page)—see https://www.alpurdy.ca/residency/ for details.

Applications should consider “Why the A-frame?” and “What is your creative leap?” and “Why now?

The inaugural 2025 Steven Heighton Fellowship will take place from August 10 to September 19 at the A-frame, from September 19 to 26 in Kingston with the Heighton Happening on September 27.

Six hard copies of the application and the accompanying material should be sent to

Jean Baird
The Al Purdy A-frame Association
401 – 4542 West 10th Ave.
Vancouver BC V6R 2J1

• Email one electronic copy of the application and accompanying material to jeanbaird@shaw.ca. Please send one email with all documents and a subject line that includes your name and “Heighton Fellowship application.”
Please be sure to add your address and phone number. Any questions can be addressed to jeanbaird@shaw.ca.

Applications will close on November 15, 2024 – mailed materials must be postmarked November 15, 2024, or before. Electronic copies must be received by 4 p.m. PT. If you wait until the last day please send by courier.

Reminder that the deadline for Applications for the Al and Eurithe Purdy Writer-in-Residence Program is October 18, 2024

https://www.alpurdy.ca/residency/

https://www.alpurdy.ca/donate/

Thank you for your consideration, and your support!