S H E I L A H E T I .
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Homepage
www.sheilaheti.net
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Biography
Sheila Heti was born in Toronto. She studied playwriting at the National Theatre School in Montreal, and philosophy and art history at the University of Toronto.
She is the author of the story collection The Middle Stories and the novel Ticknor. Her writing has appeared in various places—The Believer, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Brick.
She is also the creator of the Trampoline Hall lecture series, at which people speak on subjects outside their areas of expertise. The New Yorker praised the series for "celebrating eccentricity and do-it-yourself inventiveness." Trampoline Hall has run monthly in Toronto since December 2001, and has sold out every show since its inception.
In early 2008, she created The Metaphysical Poll (www.metaphysicalpoll.com), an archive of (sleeping) dreams people were having about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and, later, John McCain.
In 2006, she received a citation from the City of Toronto, awarded to 12 "cultural mavericks who, through artistic promise, achievement or vision, have enriched the cultural life of this city now and for future generations."
She often collaborates with other artists, most recently, the painter Margaux Williamson, DNA Theatre, the artist Leanne Shapton, and the band the Hidden Cameras. The Philadelphia City Paper wrote of her: "It would be a mistake to call this young Canadian author promising, she delivers like a motherfucker."
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Books
Ticknor (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006)
The Middle Stories (McSweeney's Books, 2002)
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Press
December 2006
Harvard Review
Review: Ticknor
By Nicole Lamy
"Torontonian Sheila Heti's first novel, Ticknor—a slim volume that confines itself entirely to the thoughts of a nineteenth-century bibliophile—is both utterly surprising and also exactly what one might expect from the author of a bewitching story collection and the founder of an eccentric lecture series."
May 2006
San Francisco Chronicle
Review: Ticknor
A Man Carries a Pie to a Party, and Worlds Open
By Britt Peterson
"Heti's touch is confident. She builds a memorable world inside the tiny space of Ticknor's anxious imagination, and we barely miss the air outside."
April 2006
Esquire.com
Review: Ticknor
Obsessed with Books, and Himself
By Anna Godbersen
"Ticknor seems at first little more than a darkly amusing monologue, but it is, in the end, a work brilliantly crafted to deliver its revelations and redemptions. It is stylish and slim, but original, and full of feeling."
April 2006
New York Sun
Review: Ticknor
Self-Mothering and Independence
By Benjamin Lytal
"Sheila Heti's debut novel, Ticknor, has many appeals, all of them literary. The self-looping pleasures of a confused, modern narrator sit surprisingly well with the more sedate pleasures of the 19th-century setting."
Spring 2005
University of Toronto Magazine
Disappearing Act
By Micah Toub
"Levine enjoyed The Middle Stories and thinks Heti's writing echoes elements of Joyce. 'Underlying their verbal games there is a powerful sympathetic imagination,' Levine says."
April 2005
Ottawa Citizen
Review: Ticknor
Playing With Words
By Melanie Little
"Ticknor is a book that defies easy interpretation and even classification. It's neither serious nor comic, neither 'straight' nor parodic, neither historical nor contemporary. It is a succession of shrewdly observed moments that do, ultimately, cohere into an experience that is no less affecting for being mysterious."
April 2005
National Post
Review: Ticknor
By Frank Moher
"Ticknor is ... charming and funny, with the courage of its eccentricities."
March 2005
Eye Weekly
Review: Ticknor
Life Is Other People
By Damian Rogers
"Heti clearly has a great love of perfection; the near mathematical precision of her work reflects a level of discipline and control of language that is considered unusual in younger writers."
March 2005
CBC.ca
Review: Ticknor
The Nature of Envy
By Andrea Curtis
"[Ticknor] is plainly revealed to us ... and the result is an intimate portrayal of a man whose intrigues, insecurities and petty jealousies could exist anywhere, from 19th-century Boston to, say, 21st-century Toronto."
April 2003
Philadelphia City Paper
Review: The Middle Stories
Author unknown
"Though The Middle Stories marks Sheila Heti's literary debut, it would be a mistake to call this young Canadian author promising. She delivers like a motherfucker. These stories fly off the pages, pages that you'll turn fast enough to line your fingers with paper cuts."
2003
Globe and Mail
Rewriting Our Sense of Self
Alison Gzowski, moderated
"As part of the New Canada series on Canadians in their 20s, The Globe assembled a panel of four of the country's most prominent authors under 30, who all published their first books in the past couple of years."
April 2002
Interview
Book 'Em: Five first-time authors to bookmark
By Diane Baroni
"Sheila Heti, 25, author of The Middle Stories (McSweeney's Books) says her stories 'come from a feeling that I want to write, not of wanting to write a particular thing.' Maybe that's why Heti's work is so original."
July 2001
Toronto Star
Review: The Middle Stories
Nothing Middle About It
By Eva Tihanyi
"Sheila Heti's first book lives up to the major hype."
April 2001
Eye Weekly
Interview and Review: The Middle Stories
Favourite Mistakes
By Kevin Connolly
"'I think one way of going wrong is to try to get rid of the faults you see in your own fiction or art,' Heti suggests. 'There's something equally powerful about what you're doing wrong at a very early stage in your writing life. In a way, that's where a person's true originality is. To write in a way where you get too far away from that strikes me as hollow–a little too polished, even a little fraudulent.'"
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Additional Links
Trampoline Hall
Trampoline Hall Tour Diary
Testimonials About The Middle Stories From Five Canadian Authors
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Author Photo
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Photo by Chris Buck
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