Steven Toussaint was born in Chicago in 1986. He immigrated to New Zealand in 2011 and now lives in Auckland. He has studied poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the International Institute of Modern Letters, and philosophical theology at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of a poetry collection, The Bellfounder (The Cultural Society, 2015), and a chapbook, Fiddlehead (Compound Press, 2014). His writing has appeared in numerous publications, most recently Poetry, Commonweal, The Spinoff, Sport, and The Winter Anthology. He has been recognised in the past few years by residencies at The University of Waikato and the Michael King Writers’ Centre and with a Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship. His second collection, Lay Studies (Victoria University Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the Mary and Peter.Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

 

Links:

Steven’s website

Victoria University Press author page

NZ Poetry Foundation poet page

NZ Poetry Shelf written interview discussing Lay Studies (Sept, 2019)

Steven reads ‘Aevum Measures’ from Lay Studies

Radio interview w/ Karyn Hay on RNZ’s Lately Book Club (16/7/19)

Radio interview w/ Clare Jones on Fresh FM’s ‘Me, My Shelf, and I’ (9/7/19)