Steven Heighton Fellowship
The Steven Heighton 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.
Every two years, one deserving writer, artist or musician will receive a financial award of $7,500, a five-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 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.
The next Steven Heighton Fellowship will take place in 2027.
Application Process
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.
Applications should include:
- 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 including a public event. In 100 to 150 words, please indicate how you might wish to share your talents, interests, and/or proposed project with Queen’s students. (For example, you might propose a reading, a literary event, a workshop, or a roundtable. Departmental leadership will work with the successful candidate to develop and implement an event plan.)
- 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 consider “Why the A-frame?” and “What is your creative leap?” and “Why now?”
The 2027 Heighton Fellowship will take place late summer/early fall.
Five 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 info@alpurdy.ca. Please send one email with all documents and a subject line that includes your name and “Heighton Fellowship application.”
Please be sure to include your address and phone number. Any questions can be addressed to info@alpurdy.ca.