Heather is a best-selling, award-winning novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. In 2006 she published her debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals, which critics called “hypnotic” and praised for depicting “the most sympathetic abusive father in literature”. It won the Hugh McLennan Prize for Fiction, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Governor Generals’ Award, and when it won the Canada Reads competition in 2007, it catapulted Heather to literary stardom. She has since published The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, a collection of stories called Daydreams of Angels, and two more novels, The Lonely Hearts Hotel and When We Lost Our Heads.

In this entertaining conversation, learn more about Heather’s early life and a hint of what’s to come in her next novel, her first to depart from Montreal.