Sheila Heti (; born 25 December 1976) is a Canadians writer in English language.
Early life
Sheila Heti was born on 25 December 1976 in
Toronto.
Her parents are Hungarian Jewish immigrants.
Her brother is comedian David Heti.
Sheila Heti attended St. Clement's School in Toronto. She graduated from North Toronto Collegiate Institute in Toronto. She then studied playwriting at the National Theatre School of Canada (leaving the program after one year) and then art history as well as philosophy at the University of Toronto.
Career
Writing
Heti's writing spans a variety of genres including plays, short fiction, and novels. She has contributed to periodicals such as
Flare,
London Review of Books,
Brick,
Open Letters,
Maisonneuve,
Bookforum,
n+1, the
Look,
McSweeney's,
The New Yorker, and the
New York Times. Her books have been published internationally, including France, Italy, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.
She formerly worked as the interviews editor at The Believer
For the early part of 2008, Heti kept a blog called The Metaphysical Poll, where she posted the dreams people had in their sleep about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary season, which readers submitted.
Acting and theater
Heti was an actress as a child and as a teenager appeared in shows directed by
Hillar Liitoja, the founder and artistic director of the experimental DNA Theatre.
She appears in Margaux Williamson's 2010 film Teenager Hamlet and plays Lenore Doolan from Leanne Shapton's book Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. In November 2013, Jordan Tannahill directed Heti's play All Our Happy Days Are Stupid at Toronto's Videofag. It was remounted in February 2015 at The Kitchen in New York. Her decade-long struggle to write the play is a primary plot element in her novel How Should a Person Be?[ "How Sheila Heti's long-abandoned play went from her bottom drawer to a Toronto stage". The Globe and Mail, 23 October 2013.]
Books
The Middle Stories
Heti's first book,
The Middle Stories, a collection of thirty short stories, was published by House of Anansi in
Canada in 2001 when she was twenty-four. It was published by McSweeney's in the United States in 2002. It has been translated into German, French, Spanish, and Dutch.
Ticknor
Heti's novella,
Ticknor, was released in 2005. The novel's main characters are based on real people: William Hickling Prescott and
George Ticknor, although the facts of their lives are altered. It was published by House of Anansi Press in Canada, Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the United States, and Éditions Phébus in
France.
How Should a Person Be?
Heti's
How Should a Person Be? was published in September 2010. She describes it as a work of constructed reality, based on recorded interviews with her friends, particularly the painter Margaux Williamson. It was published by Henry Holt in the United States in July 2012 in a slightly different edition (she has spoken in interviews about the edits she made), and the subtitle "A Novel from Life" was added. It was chosen by The New York Times as one of the 100 Best Books of 2012 and by James Wood of The New Yorker as one of the best books of the year. It was also included on year-end lists on Salon, The New Republic, The New York Observer, and more publications.
In her 2007 interview with Dave Hickey for The Believer, she noted, "Increasingly I'm less interested in writing about fictional people, because it seems so tiresome to make up a fake person and put them through the paces of a fake story. I just–I can't do it."
The Chairs Are Where the People Go
In 2011, she published
The Chairs Are Where the People Go, which she wrote with her friend,
Misha Glouberman.
The New Yorker called it "a triumph of conversational philosophy" and named it one of the Best Books of 2011.
We Need a Horse
McSweeney's commissioned the children's book from Heti; it was illustrated by Clare Rojas.
Women in Clothes
In Fall 2014, Heti published a non-fiction book about women's relationship to what they wear, with co-editors
Leanne Shapton and
Heidi Julavits.
It was a crowd-sourced book, featuring the voices of 639 women from around the world. The book was published by
Penguin Books in the US and the UK, with a
German language edition published in 2015 by S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main. It was on
The New York Times Best Seller list for several months.
Motherhood
In May 2018, Heti published an autobiographical novel,
Motherhood, focused on her deliberation on whether to have children.
Initially conceived as a
non-fiction work, Heti explores the emphasis society places on motherhood and how women are judged regardless of their decision: "... a woman will always be made to feel like a criminal, whatever choice she makes, however hard she tries. Mothers feel like criminals. Nonmothers do, too."
The book was named as a shortlisted finalist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
[ "Esi Edugyan, Patrick deWitt among finalists for $100,000 Giller Prize". Toronto Star, 1 October 2018.]
LitHub named her novel, Motherhood, as a Favorite Book of 2018 and a New York Times Critics Pick of 2018.
Pure Colour
Pure Colour, a new novel exploring the
human condition, appeared in 2022. It was the winner of the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 2022 Governor General's Awards.
[Deborah Dundas, "Sheila Heti, Eli Baxter win 2022 Governor General's Literary Awards for fiction and non-fiction". Toronto Star, November 16, 2022.] The novel is a meditation and exploration on creation, as the protagonist, Mira, is living in the "first draft of creation." Through Mira's journey of friendship, love, loss and grief, Heti simultaneously seeks what it means to create and what it means for oneself to be a product of creation. Creation is explored through the cosmology of the "creation story" and through art, interpersonal relationships and self-identity.
Alphabetical Diaries
Alphabetical Diaries was released in early 2024. Heti had taken a decade's worth of diaries and ordered the sentences alphabetically, before spending another decade or so paring them down into a new book.
Awards
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| — | KM Hunter Artists Award | | |
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| Women's Prize for Fiction | | |
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| Governor General's Award for English-language fiction | | |
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Personal life
Heti lives in Toronto.
Bibliography
Author
Short stories
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"The Raspberry Bush"
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"Lilly in the Wintertime"
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"The Poet and the Novelist as Roommates"
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"Mermaid in a Jar"
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"What Changed"
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"Eleanor"
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"The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea"
Essays
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"I Didn't Like Sitting With the Rattle for Hours." The Brooklyn Rail. 2017.
Editor
Contributor
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Women in Clothes. Blue Rider Press. 2014.
Interviews
External links
