CHARLOTTETOWN – Steven Heighton, award-winning novelist, poet, short-story writer and essayist has been a writer-in-residence multiple times, now he’s adding UPEI to the list.
Heighton, an Ontario resident was recently named the University of Prince Edward Island’s winter 2018 writerin-residence.
He has travelled and worked in western Canada, Australia and Asia and studied at Queen’s University and settled in Kingston, Ont.
Now he writes full time.
His distinctions include several gold medals for fiction and poetry from the National Magazine Awards and the 2016 Governor General’s Award for Poetry for “The Waking Comes Late”. He has also led writing workshops in settings including The Banff Centre, the Sage Hill Writing Experience in Saskatchewan and the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Heighton’s public reading is set for Tuesday, Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m. and he will lead two writing workshops on Saturday, Feb. 10. Both events will be in the Faculty Lounge of UPEI’s SDU Main Building.
His morning workshop from 9:30 am to 12 pm will feature “re-enactive” techniques, allowing writers “to create sentences or passages of great vividness and sensual intensity. To work re-enactively is to embody, in the full sensory meaning of that word, whatever you're writing about, rather than just describing it,” explained Heighton.
In the afternoon workshop (1:30 pm to 4:00 pm), writers will practice “homophonic translation.” This exercise involves “translating” from a language participants don’t know, just on the basis of sound.
“The results are always funny and often spectacularly good—and sometimes also moving. The process is a wonderful way to make writers approach their work with greater acoustical/musical sensitivity rather than simply, flatly saying something about how they feel,” said Heighton.
The workshop are $40 each, or $70 for the whole day. Seniors and students pay $35 for one or $60 for the day. To register, see the UPEI Winter’s Tales Authors’ Reading Series Facebook site.
