Sheila Heti

Sheila Heti, writer (born 25 December 1976 in Toronto, ON). Sheila Heti is best known for her second novel, How Should a Person Be? (2010), and as the co-founder of the comedic lecture series Trampoline Hall.

Early Life, Education and Career

Sheila Heti was born in Toronto to Jewish Hungarian parents. She attended high school in Toronto and studied playwriting at the National Theatre School in Montréal, Québec. She went on to study art history and philosophy at the University of Toronto. Her first book, The Middle Stories, a collection of 30 short stories, was published in Canada in 2001 and later by McSweeney’s (an American publishing house founded by David Eggers in 1998) in the United States. The stories, at once surreal and accessible — dumplings and mermaids appear as characters — were widely praised for their originality and dark humour.

Shortly after the publication of The Middle Stories, Heti founded Trampoline Hall along with her friend and occasional artistic collaborator Misha Glouberman. Trampoline Hall is a monthly lecture series that features speakers who improvise on topics in which they have no formal expertise. First held at The Cameron House, Trampoline Hall currently takes place at The Garrison, a bar and music venue in Toronto, and has also toured widely around Canada and the United States. The event is hosted by Misha Glouberman and has sold out every show since its launch in 2001.

In 2005, Heti published her first novel, Ticknor, a historical narrative inspired by the friendship between American historians George Ticknor and William Hickling Prescott. Composed mostly of Ticknor’s interior monologue as he makes his way to a dinner party hosted by Prescott, Heti’s novel is a highly original and potent exploration of writerly insecurity, vanity, failure and friendship.

Mid-Career

In 2010, Heti published her second novel, How Should a Person Be? It was later published in the United States in a revised edition with the added subtitle: “A Novel from Life.” How Should a Person Be? tells the story of a young writer named Sheila as she struggles to a write a play “that will change the world,” and navigates her way through a rocky landscape of sex, art and friendship in downtown Toronto. The novel was praised for its candid and hilarious portrayal of 20-something culture and for its innovative form — indeed, Heti included real-life recorded conversations with her friend the painter Margaux Williamson in the text. How Should a Person Be? was reviewed widely, from the London Review of Books to the New Yorker, where Heti was profiled by James Wood. Time called it one of the most talked about books of 2012.

In the same vein of using material from “real life,” Heti’s next book, The Chairs Are Where the People Go (2011), is a collaboration with her friend Misha Glouberman. Comprised of 72 short essays that Heti typed out as Glouberman spoke off the top of his head, the unusually formed book covers a vast range of subjects, from the use of gyms to monogamy. The New Yorker named it one of the best books of 2011. In 2011, Heti also published her first children’s book, We Need a Horse, which was illustrated by American artist Clare Rojas.

Heti’s first play, All Our Happy Days Are Stupid, was originally commissioned by Nightwood Theatre in 2001, but the production fell through. Heti, however, dramatized her struggle to write the play in How Should a Person Be?,and in 2013 she was approached by the theatre director Jordan Tannahill to see if the play still existed. It did. And her absurdist musical about two families on vacation in Paris was finally staged in 2013, in Toronto, at Videofag, directed by Tannahill, and later at Harbourfront World Stage and in New York City at The Kitchen. The script of All Our Happy Days Are Stupid was published by McSweeney’s in 2015 with forwards by Tannahill and Heti.

In 2014, Heti published Women in Clothes, a collaboration with American novelist Heidi Julavits and Canadian graphic novelist Leanne Shapton, which features 639 contributions from women around the world about their relationship to what they wear. The entries vary in form — essays, photographs, interviews — and include contributions from many notable women, such as Lena Dunham, Molly Ringwald and Miranda July. Women in Clothes was a New York Times Bestseller.

Other Writing and Projects

Sheila Heti’s essays and book reviews have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, n + 1, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the London Review of Books, Geist and many other publications. She was the interviews editor at the Believer for a number of years.