Heidi Sopinka

Heidi Sopinka has worked as a bush cook in the Yukon, a travel-guide writer in Southeast Asia, a helicopter pilot, a magazine editor, and a columnist at the Globe and Mail. She is currently a designer at and co-founder of Horses Atelier. Her writing has won a National Magazine Award and has appeared in numerous publications, including Toronto Life, Flare, Chatelaine, and The Believer. The Dictionary of Animal Languages is her first novel and is currently being translated into Polish. Website: heidisopinka.com. Twitter: @horsesatelier. Instagram: @heidisopinka.

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Reviews:

“Heidi Sopinka’s debut novel The Dictionary of Animal Languages is an overwhelming experience” – In the Toronto Star
“The final detail is startling – arguably even more so given the realization that Sopinka is describing an actual work of 20th-century art – In Quill and Quire

Interviews:

“Heidi Sopinka has been a bush cook in the Yukon, a travel writer in southeast Asia, a helicopter pilot and these days she works as a journalist and a designer” – On CBC Radio
“Her new release, The Dictionary of Animal Languages (Hamish Hamilton Canada), tells a tale of love, grief, animals, and art, through the story of a woman named Ivory Frame at the ages of 19 and 92″ – On 29 Secrets

The Dictionary of Animal Languages

In 1930s Paris, young Ivory Frame studies art and quickly finds her true homeamong the avant-garde painters and poets who crowd the city’s cafes. In Lev, the haunted Russian émigré painter, she finds the love that will mark her life forever.

When the Second World War sweeps away that life, she turns to the project she had begun in Paris, which will consume her life: a dictionary of animal languages. Part science, part art, it strives to transcribe the wordless yearning of animals, the lonely and love-laden cries that expect no response.

A masterfully written story about love and art and the realization that, like tragedy, the best things in life arrive unexpectedly.