“I’ve always tried to read widely, in fiction, in poetry, but most of all in nonfiction,” says author Steven Price. “I do think everything acts as an influence on a writer, and that that’s a good thing. I believe an emerging writer ought to read everything she can find, everything she can get her hands on. Influence is a gradual thing, an approximate thing. A young writer afraid of being “influenced” by another writer’s voice needs to be reading far more hungrily. We are all of us made up of so many influences, the rhythms of our parents’ voices, our childhood friends’ teasing, the prose we have read and loved.”

Steven is the author of two novels, By Gaslight, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Into That Darkness. Also an acclaimed poet, he is author of Anatomy of Keys, winner of the Gerald Lampert Award, and Omens in the Year of the Ox, winner of the ReLit Award.

Lampedusa, his latest novel, is set in Sicily, among the decadent Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s where Giuseppe Tomasi, the last prince of Lampedusa, struggles to complete the novel The Leopard.

Steven lives in Victoria, B.C. with his partner, fellow writer and KWF alumna Esi Edugyan, and their two children.

Author Patron: Jan Walter & Steve Iscoe

Appearing in: 48. Sicilian Awakenings: Fiction

Website: www.facebook.com/stevenpriceauthor
Book: www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/253484/lampedusa-by-steven-price