Sacred Rage

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By (author): Steven Heighton

“A writer only feels like a writer when in the act. And the will, I said, is never enough . . . Where does inspiration, that sacred rage, originate? Maybe it’s just a matter of stubbornly starting something new and writing your way into the slot.”—Steven Heighton

In the years before his unexpected death, returning to short fiction after a long absence, Steven Heighton wrote to his longtime editor John Metcalf to say that he understood that the short story marked his most important contribution to literature, and that “after the novels, rereading and writing short stories again felt like returning home.” In the fifteen stories taken from across his four collections, Sacred Rage offers us Heighton as the moral explorer of the global suburbs, as chronicler of our innermost stories of love and fear, sleeping and waking, of a rebel “unabashedly devoted to the old pursuit,” as he once called it, “of truth and beauty.” These are stories of grace and the lack of it; of elegy and requiem; of hope and care in a world where these seem increasingly alien, stories by one of our most sharp-eyed and generous writers, whether you’re discovering them for the first time, or once again.

AUTHOR

Steven Heighton

Steven Heighton (1961–2022) was a writer and musician. His nineteen previous books include the novels Afterlands, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and the bestselling The Shadow Boxer; the Writers’ Trust Hilary Weston Prize finalist memoir Reaching Mithymna: Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos; and The Waking Comes Late, winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry.

Reviews

Praise forInstructions for the Drowning

To read work like Heightons knowing that we wont get more of it inspires fury in all directions Every story in this collection has it whatever Heighton decided it would be pacing that thrills fragile love and blind hate descriptions you can smell and taste and hearltbr gtNew York Times

Heighton who died last year at 60 draws on our most vulnerable moments in this moving collection full of understated tension and exacting detail The characters feel both recognizable and oneofakindltbr gtNew York Times

These stories by a Canadian novelist poet and musician who died last year peer keenly into the penumbra surrounding deathltbr gtNew Yorker

To create so many small worlds and characters that feel so real and populate is an act of transcendence To do it well is to offer a gift In Instructions the late Steven Heighton has managed both and the gift is oursltbr gtGlobe and Mail

As these stories demonstrate human life is a means of exploration and celebration threaded through with darkness and loss In the midst of death Heighton seems to say we are in life it should be savouredltbr gtToronto Star

As a poet and later as fiction writer Steven Heighton had this stunning range of voice in his stories He would go anywhere He always surprised you His death as a still young writer is a tragedy and a great loss He was a writer who grew so much with each book You could always witness it happeningltbr gtMichael Ondaatje