Stephan Antoine Viau is a poet, translator, and reviewer. He earned his MFA in poetry from Louisiana State University. He is the author of two long-form poetry collections, PARADISE (Rockwood Press, 2026) and HEIRLOOMS (Finishing Line Press, 2026), and the poetry chapbook mini, Hole (Malarkey Press, 2026). Work of his has appeared in The Hong Kong Review of Books, The Colorado Review, Matter Press, ABSTRACT, The Word’s Faire, HASH, and New Delta Review, among others. He lives in Maryland with his family.
PRAISE:
In Heirlooms, Stephan Viau’s debut poetry collection, the poet explores the wavery, mutating properties of memory, and how memory simultaneously shores up and dissolves our identity. Here, remembrance isn’t sentimental but deeply un-anchoring, even phantasmagoric. As Viau writes, “it is not an autumn flavor to remember / it is not a faithful time warp.” Heirloomsbrilliantly—through its refrains of toothaches, kitchens, and TV lights—conjures up the weirdness of “the past.” And by doing so galvanizes the present.
–James Pate, author of The Fassbinder Diariesand Mineral Planet
Soviet film theorists viewed a film as a series of images. The magic was the placement, that with juxtaposition, individual images gained new context and meaning. Stephan Viau, in Heirlooms, achieves the same fascinating effect. Like the buzzing crackle of static on the TV & the way it can both disquiet and comfort, we revisit these places and relationships, haunt & re-haunt them. Sometimes this lingering reveals something new. And when it does not, it becomes another revelation of its own. As much as an exhumation as it is an examination, Heirlooms offers something rare: an unflinching yet tender parsing of a complicated family relationship.
–An Chang Joon, author of God-Disease
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