Sheila Heti

Image | Sheila Heti

Caption: Sheila Heti is a Toronto-based author and playwright. (Steph Martyniuk)

Sheila Heti is a noted Toronto-based playwright and author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction whose work has been translated in over a dozen languages.
Her play All Our Happy Days are Stupid appeared on stages in New York and Toronto and her book How Should a Person Be? was a New York Times Notable Book.
Her 2018 novel Motherhood, about a woman debating what motherhood means and whether or not she wants to become one at all, was shortlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Her 2022 novel, Pure Colour, follows Mira, who leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira's chest like a portal. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters the strange and dizzying dimension that great loss opens up.
In 2022, she also published her second picture book, A Garden of Creatures (illustrated by Esmé Shapiro), which explores how children can begin to make sense of loss.

Books by Sheila Heti

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Interviews with Sheila Heti

Media Audio | Sheila Heti answers our Proust questionnaire

Caption: Sheila Heti on her favourite character in fiction, her greatest regret and more.

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Media Audio | Sleepover : Sheila vs. the Internet

Caption: Author Sheila Heti is a shining literary light. But it seems the more popular she is, the more detractors there are. She doesn’t want to be paralyzed by online comments, but she refuses to ignore valid criticism

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Media Audio | Q : 'Women in Clothes' editors seek why, not how, of self-presentation

Caption: Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton on their collection of essays about what women wear.

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