Since its first publication in 1985, The Grey Islands has become a classic of Canadian wilderness writing to set beside the works of Thoreau, Annie Dillard and Aldo Leopold. Using a broad range of forms and styles - lyric, anecdote, field notes, documents and pseudo-documents, ghost story, tall tale - Steffler relates the story of one man's pilgrimage to a remote island of Newfoundland's northern peninsula. Often comic, and always deeply passionate and sensuous, The Grey Islands tells of the sharpening of perceptions whetted by solitude, wind and rock, and of the pilgrim's people - living and dead - who have striven to exist under its harsh regime. As in his other books, like That Night We Were Ravenous or his acclaimed novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright, Steffler's writing delivers the bite of raw experience and embraces existence at the edge in all its terror and beauty.

John Steffler was the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada from 2006 to 2008. His other books of poetry include Lookout, a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize; That Night We Were Ravenous, winner of the Atlantic Poetry Prize; and Helix: New and Selected Poems, winner of the Newfoundland and Labrador Poetry Prize. Steffler is also the author of the award-winning novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright.