Carleigh Baker

Carleigh Baker is an nêhiyaw âpihtawikosisân/Icelandic writer who lives as a guest on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwu7mesh, and səl̓ilwəta peoples. Her work has appeared in Best Canadian Essays, The Short Story Advent Calendar, and The Journey Prize Stories. She also writes reviews for The Globe and Mail and The Literary Review of Canada. Her debut story collection, Bad Endings, won the City of Vancouver Book Award and was a finalist for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Indigenous Voices Award for Fiction, and the BC Book Prize Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award.

Website: carleighbaker.com

FESTIVAL BOOK

Last Woman

There’s a hole in the ozone layer. Are teenage girls to blame? 

Floods and wildfires, toxic culture, billionaires in outer space, or a purse-related disaster while on mushrooms—in today’s hellscape world, there’s no shortage of things to worry about. Last Woman, the new collection of short fiction by award-winning author Carleigh Baker, wants you to know that you’re not alone. In these 13 brilliant new stories, Baker and her perfectly-drawn characters are here for you—in fact, they’re just as worried and weirded-out as everyone else.

A woman’s dream of poetic solitude turns out to be a recipe for loneliness. A retiree is convinced that his silence is the only thing that will prevent a deadly sinkhole. An emerging academic wakes up and chooses institutional violence. A young woman finds sisterhood in a strange fertility ritual, and an enigmatic empath is on a cleanse. Baker’s characters are both wildly misguided and a product of the misguided times in which we live. Through them we see our world askew and skewered—and, perhaps, we can begin to see it anew.

Baker’s signature style is irreverent, but her heart is true—these stories delve into fear for the future, intergenerational misunderstandings, and the complexities of belonging with sharp wit and boundless empathy. With equal parts compassion and critique, she brings her clear-eyed attention to bear on our world, and the results are hilarious, heartbreaking, and startling in their freshness.

GET THE BOOK

Owl’s Nest Books | Calgary Public Library | Audio

BE CURIOUSER 

• ‘It’s kind of a non-stop hellscape’: Carleigh Baker on the uncanny reality of writing climate change fiction. –The Next Chapter
• On Misanthropy, Mental Illness and Marpole, with Local Author, Carleigh Baker. –Scout Magazine
• Irreverent Story Collection Captivating. –Winnipeg Free Press 
• Rot beneath the gloss: Last Woman by Carleigh Baker. –The British Columbia Review