Heather O’Neill

Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Her novel The Lonely Hearts Hotel won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Canada Reads. Her previous work, which includes Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and Daydreams of Angels, has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Lullabies for Little Criminals won Canada Reads and Daydreams of Angels won the Danuta Gleed Award. Perdre la tête, the translation of her most recent novel When We Lost Our Heads, was shortlisted for the Prix des Libraires du Quebec. Born and raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there with her daughter Arizona, with whom she hosts a monthly book column on CBC Montreal’s Homerun.

Instagram/Threads: @oneillreads

FESTIVAL BOOKS

The Capital of Dreams

Fourteen -year-old Sofia Bottom lives in a small country that Europe has forgotten. But inside its borders, the old myths of trees that come alive and fairies who live among their roots have given way to an explosion of the arts and the consolations of philosophy. No one, from the clarinetists to the cabaret singers, is as revered as Sofia’s brilliant mother, the writer Clara Bottom. How can Sofia, with a tin ear and an enduring love of the old myths, ever hope to win her mother’s love?

When the country’s greatest enemy invades, and the Capital is under threat, at last Clara turns to her daughter. Sofia must smuggle her new manuscript to safety on the last train evacuating children from the city. But the train draws to a suspicious halt in the middle of a forest, and Sofia runs for her life, losing her mother’s most prized possession. Frightened and alone in a country at war, Sofia must find a way to reclaim what she has lost. On an epic journey through woods and razed towns, colliding with soldiers, survivors and other lost children, Sofia must make the choice between kindness and survival.

In this stunning dark fairy tale of a novel, Heather O’Neill reveals once again her mastery of language that is as delicious as cake and as serious as a gunshot.

GET THE BOOK

Owls Nest Books | Calgary Public Library | Audio

Secret Sex: An Anthology, edited by Russell Smith

If authors could write their sex scenes anonymously, would they be less reticent? Would they include the stuff they didn’t want their mom, or the newspapers, to read? Here are twenty-four original short pieces of fiction on the theme of sex, by 24 prominent authors living in Canada. The pieces are uncensored, unpredictable; they veer from graphic to subtle to surreal. There is straight sex and gay sex. There is frustrated sex. There is sex that happens entirely through text messages. Secret Sex is a book of erotic imaginings by some of Canada’s most sophisticated and respected writers, working in total freedom, secretly.

Featuring Angie Abdou, Jean-Marc Ah-Sen, Tamara Faith Berger, Jowita Bydlowska, Xaiver Campbell, K.S. Covert, francesca ekwuyasi, Anna Fitzpatrick, Drew Hayden Taylor, Victoria Hetherington, Marni Jackson, Andrew Kaufman, Michael LaPointe, Pasha Malla, Sophie McCreesh, Lisa Moore, Heather O’Neill, Lee Suksi, Susan Swan, Heidi von Palleske, Aley Waterman, Zoe Whittall, David Whitton, and Michael Winter. But we won’t tell you who wrote what.

GET THE BOOK

Owls Nest Books | Calgary Public Library

BE CURIOUSER

• Big Generous Brains: Heather O’Neill. –Wordfest Imagine on Air
• An interview with Heather O’Neill. –The Concordian
• Heather O’Neill and Catherine Leroux chat about French Canadian history, feral children & the power of words. –CBC The Next Chapter