I have been intrigued by Steven Lattey’s writing for twenty years.  There is something completely odd and/or unique in his sense of vision, his sense of humor, his use of language, but maybe even more than these things, his style.  His style has always seemed unworldly in terms of where and when he grew up and even in terms of what contemporary Canadian writers might often seem comfortable with.  Steven’s style is a composition that seems Eastern European to me, almost classical, late nineteenth century, slightly elevated and formal in some ways, but always anarchic, satiric and even brutally grotesque in other ways. In the long run I suspect all these almost contradictions or pulls are rooted in the aesthetic of how Lattey seems to experience other human beings. A bit of Flannery O.Connor here, a bit of Nathaniel West there. And over the years he seems to have refined a ‘continental’ style that mixes surrealism with strong doses of burlesque and grotesque. The general effect for a reader experiencing Steven’s writing for the first time might be to hear echoes of Rilke, Kafka, Borges or the burlesque voices of Vonnegut, Brautigan, Dillard, or in his more recent work, Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Olga Tokarczuk's and Ilse Aichinger. So though Steven’s writing feels ‘continental’ even poised in a kind of late 19th Century high-toned delivery, he is actually one of the most experimental and irreverent writers I know. It all works together so well. And that’s what makes his work so interesting.

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Like many Canadian writers who need to have a ‘day job,’ and who choose to live a life outside the cultural centres or institutions of art in this country, Steven has worked for the CPR, and he’s invested in Echinacea farms, and he’s worked for years as a carpenter, and most recently helped develop a polling company that specialized in setting up and administering electronic voting in both Canadian and American cities. A very busy writer. He has also studied poetry and fiction with many other writers wherever he lived in the 70s and 80s, beginning with Robin Blazer and Barry McKinnon and his work as one of the founding members of The Kalamalka New Writers Society in Vernon---alongside the writers Virginia Dansereau, Dennis Butler, Ann Alma, Louise Donnelly, Al Smith, John Lent, Suzanne Milburn and Calvin White. Steven published a lot of poetry in University magazines and periodicals over the years and in 2000, Thistledown Press published a book of Steven’s short stories called Aphid and The Shadow Drinkers. And he is now, for the first time in his life, free to devote himself to his writing more freely. Here’s his website, and hopefully, we will all see more and more of Steven’s work. I sure hope so. 

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John Lent

Writer

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About Steven's book of short fiction, "Aphid and the Shadow Drinkers".

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The Valley was settled at the turn of the century.  First came the English gentry, the Italian stoneworkers, the fruit growers; then came the refuges from Europe.  All of them carried secrets from the past: guilts and horrors that coiled beneath their beds like children’s nightmares.  These are the shadows which stir into life as the modern world, the highways from east and west, cut through the hills.

An imaginative tour de force, Aphid & The Shadow Drinkers is by turns hilarious and horrifying, realistic and visionary.  The stories are all on the side of innocence, rebelling against cruelty, idolatry and greed.  This is truly a new voice in Canadian writing: there is something of Kafka, something of Rabelais, something of H.P. Lovecraft at work here.

Steven Lattey’s style is as original and mercurial as his imagination, and underlying these stories is a wholly unique, uninsistent mythology: a sense of rebirth from the shadows, of destinies working themselves out across generations and cultures.

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Writer/Editor

Sean Virgo     

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And I cannot resist to lay down Sean Virgo's kind comments on my website: 

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Hi Steven, this is very rich and, from what I've explored so far, an inseparable braid of beauty and despair, at once a dalliance with and rejection of abstractions. Hurtfully luminous and your very own, even as you yoke the voices and images of so many others to your plough.
Thanks for this, and of course come by in the Spring if you're down this way and I am at home.
Be well as maybe - making survives us and vice versa
Seán
 

Acknowledgments

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Thankyou to Silmara Emde for all her wonderful work in setting up this website.  She is a sensitive and delightfully insightful person.   She is also a wonderful photographer and managed a mystery of transformation with her magic touch.  She is filled with White Magic.  It exudes from her.

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And then there is John Lent!  My trusted reader and conspirator.  Without his guidance some of these stories would not be written at all.  I rely on his editorial criticism and his wry humour to keep me on some semblance of a path.  He has such a broad and deep knowledge of literature and his willingness to share all those years of learning, and to point me to writers that sing to me, that inspire me, that make me cry and make me laugh.  Well, that is invaluable.  And our conversations, veering and rambling, are a rare occurence of two people sharing a love of words, of sentences and a humble appreciation of all those great voices, those wonderful writers.

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And Molly March.  My only other trusted reader throughout this process.  She is rather wicked and sometimes brutal but always right on the money.  She has a very clear eye and ear and can hear the false notes when they creep in.  I am grateful for her willingness to embrace my writing.  She has been an instigator.  I am not quite sure how she does that alchemist fire-eating trick.  But, somehow, she has a force that acts as a catalyst.  Molly has also been so very helpful in developing the visuals that complement the writing.  Her understanding of Art and Art History have been such a boon to me.  

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I also want to thank Sean Virgo who, many years ago, saw something in my writing and pushed and prodded me along the way in the most beautifully subversive manner; insistently and with such erudition.  He is an intelligent spark that gave me confidence to discover my own faltering voice.   To this day, I feel his encouragment.  

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Steven Lattey