Sufjan Stevens ( /ˈsuːfjɑːn/ soof-yahn; born July 1, 1975) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Petoskey, Michigan. Stevens released his first album in 1999 called A Sun Came. He is known for his lyrically focused and instrumentally rich songs that often relate to faith and family.

Stevens was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Carrie (nee Marabeas) and Richard D. Stevens. His parents belonged to the Eastern religious sect Subud, where they had their names legally changed to Hadidjah and Rasjid, respectively. They separated within months of Stevens' birth in 1975, and he and his siblings, Djamilah Stevens (born June 15, 1970), Djohariah Stevens (born 1972) and Marzuki Stevens (born February 16, 1974), went to live with his father, who remarried shortly after to Patricia Louise. His stepmother had a daughter from a previous marriage. Stevens' father and stepmother later had a son named Colin J. Stevens. At the age of nine, his family moved to the small timber town of Petoskey, Michigan, into the summer home of his great-grandmother. His mother and her third husband, Michael Dean Gray, have a daughter named Megan Gray. In 2012, his mother published a book of poems titled I'll Go. Stevens is of Lithuanian and Greek ancestry.

External links

• Wikipedia.org: Sufjan Stevens
• About.com: Sufjan Stevens Biography
• Bomb Magazine: Thomas Pletzinger by Sufjan Stevens
• Smithsonian Magazine: One Man Band
• The Telegraph: Liturgical sounds for restaurant place-mats