Sheila Heti, author of the acclaimed How a Person Should Be? and coeditor of the best-selling anthology Women in Clothes, along with the students of 826 Valencia writing lab will edit this year’s anthology. Their compilation includes new fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and the category-defying gems that have become one of the hallmarks of this lively collection. Divine Providence / Quim Monzo—An excerpt from Notes of a Crocodile / Qiu Miaojin—This Rain / Catherine Pond—My Family's Slave / Alex Tizon—Eight Bites / Carmen Maria Machado—The Deaths of Henry King / Jesse Ball and Brain Evenson—A Refuge for Jae-In Doe: Fugues in the key of English major / Seo-Young Chu—In conversation with Vi Khi Nao / Stacey Tran—Come and Eat the World's largest shrimp cocktail in Mexico's Massacre Capital / Diego Enrique Osorno—The Uninhabitable Earth / David Wallace-Wells—An excerpt from Hunger / Roxane Gay—An excerpt from Blacks and the Master/Slave Relation / Frank B Wilderson III—A Tribute to Alvin Buenaventura / Andrew Leland, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes and Anders Nilsen—Six selected comics / Chris (Simpsons artist) — Artist's Statement / Kara Walker—Wave at the People Walking Upside Down / Tongo Eisen-Martin—Meanwhile, on Another Planet / Gunnhild Oyehaug—The David Party / David Leavitt—The Reenactors / Katherine Augusta Mayfield—Your Black Friend / Ben Passmore—Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild / Kathy Fish—Cat Person / Kristen Roupenian—An Excerpt from The Antipodes / Annie Baker—A Fair Accusation of Sexual Harassment or a Witch Hunt? / Lucy Huber—Lizard-Baby / Benjamin Schaefer—Chasing Waterfalls / László Krasznahorkai—Love, Death & Trousers: Eight Found Stories / Laura Francis and Alexander Masters—On Future and Working Through What Hurts / Hanif Abdurraqib—The Universe Would Be So Cruel / Souvankham Thammavongsa—A Love Story / Samantha Hunt
Authors
Sheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? Her upcoming novel, Pure Colour, will be published on February 15, 2022. Her second children’s book, A Garden of Creatures, illustrated by Esme Shapiro, will be published in May 2022. She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times; a list of fifteen writers from around the world who are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her books have been translated into twenty-three languages. Motherhood was chosen by the book critics at the New York Times as one of the top books of 2018, and New York magazine chose it as the Best Book of the year. How Should a Person Be? was named one of the 12 “New Classics of the 21st century” by Vulture. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a best book of the year in The New Yorker, and was cited by Time as "one of the most talked-about books of the year.” Women in Clothes, a collaboration with Leanne Shapton, Heidi Julavits, and 639 women from around the world, was a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of a children’s book titled We Need a Horse, with art by Clare Rojas. Her play, All Our Happy Days are Stupid, had sold-out runs at The Kitchen in New York and Videofag in Toronto. She is the former Interviews Editor of The Believer magazine, and has conducted many long-form print interviews with writers and artists, including Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Agnes Varda, Sophie Calle, Dave Hickey and John Currin. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Bookforum, n+1, Granta, The London Review of Books, and elsewhere. She has spoken at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the New Yorker Festival, the 92nd Street Y, the Hammer Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and at universities across North America, and festivals internationally. Her six-hour lecture on writing, delivered in the Spring of 2021, can be purchased through the Leslie Shipman agency. She is the founder of the Trampoline Hall lecture series, and appeared in Margaux Williamson’s 2012 film Teenager Hamlet, and in Leanne Shapton’s book, Important Artifacts. She lives in Toronto.
