Stephen Reid (writer)

Stephen Reid (born March 13, 1950) is a Canadian criminal, who was a member of the notorious Stopwatch Gang and has also been convicted twice of bank robbery. Reid has served time in over 20 prisons in Canada and the United States.

Born in Massey, Ontario, Reid began writing in 1984 while serving a 21-year prison sentence at the Kent Institution in Agassiz, British Columbia. During his first sentence, Reid submitted a manuscript to Susan Musgrave, then writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo. Thus developed an ongoing correspondence, and Reid and Musgrave married in 1986 at Kent. Reid also published his first novel, Jack Rabbit Parole, that year.

Reid was released on full parole in June 1987. He lived with Musgrave and her daughters in Sidney, British Columbia, teaching creative writing at Camosun College and working as a youth counsellor in the Northwest Territories. Reid also struggled with heroin and cocaine addiction, and in June 1999, he committed another bank robbery and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He received day parole on January 28, 2008.

He is the subject of a 2007 National Film Board of Canada documentary film, Inside Time, which was the recipient of a 2008 Golden Sheaf Award for social/political documentary.

Reid won the 2013 Victoria Book Award for his second work, A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden:Writing from Prison.