Meet the Author: Heather Birrell

It’s hard to believe, but here we are at the final Meet the Author interview of 2025! I had an absolutely lovely conversation with Heather Birrell, and I’m so excited for you to read it.

We talked about her wonderful debut novel, Born, a current collaborative storytelling project, and so much more. Heather’s advice for writers at the end of the interview is particularly powerful, especially as everyone gears up for their New Year’s writing resolutions. Without further ado, here’s Heather!

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Heather Birrell is the author of the Gerald Lampert award-winning poetry collection, Float and Scurry, and two story collections, Mad Hope (a Globe and Mail top fiction pick for 2012) and I know you are but what am I?. Born is her first novel (affiliate links*).

The Toronto Review of Books called Mad Hope “completely enthralling, and profoundly grounded in an empathy for the traumas and moments of relief of simply being human.”

Heather’s work has been honoured with the Journey Prize for short fiction, the Edna Staebler Award for creative non-fiction, and ARC Magazine’s Reader’s Choice Award. She has been shortlisted for the KM Hunter Award and both National and Western Magazine Awards (Canada).

Heather’s essay about motherhood—its joys and discontents—appeared in The M Word, an anthology that broadens the conversation about what mothering means today, and her essay about post-partum depression, “Further Up and Further In: Re-reading C.S. Lewis in the Wake of Mental Illness” (Canadian Notes and Queries), was a notable mention in Best American Essays 2017.

Heather teaches at a small alternative high school in Toronto, where she lives with her mother, partner, two daughters, and a whoodle named Angus. You can learn more about Heather at her website and follow her on Instagram @floatandscurry.

Tell me about your journey to writing Born.

This is my first novel, but it's my fourth book. My very first book came out in 2004, so over 20 years ago, and that was a short story collection. I guess my first love is short stories. So that's what I was always drawn to, for the intensity and the compression of the form and how they delve so ably into states of consciousness. I really love that.

I loved how a lot of the time short stories were either first person or that close psychological third person narration. So for a long time, short stories were my best love. And then I published another short story collection in 2012 and then quite soon after that, I got the germ of the idea for this novel.

But along the way, various things in my life were happening. I was parenting and teaching and just encountering all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, lots of ups and downs, and so I was always working on and thinking about the novel. I also published a poetry collection, which came out in 2019. I just got to have the launch for that before we were plunged into pandemic land.

What I will say about the novel is that the premise, the seed for the novel grew out of this situation that happened to me in my own life. The premise is that a high school teacher, an English teacher, is stuck in her classroom during a lockdown—not the COVID style lockdown—and she is very heavily pregnant. During that time that the lockdown is happening, she goes into labor, and her students are forced in some way to help or not in that situation.

The other part of the story that's important is that it's told from the point of view not only of the teacher but also some of the students in the class, and the student who is the reason why they've entered the lockdown.

When I was thinking back, I said, “Yeah, of course I had this idea, because I've been in a situation where I was very pregnant in a classroom during a lockdown.” I had this kind of thought, “Well, what if my water broke right now? What would happen?”

I was thinking about that recently, because these are the things you think about when your book's coming out. People say, “How did you get this idea?” I was like, “Yeah, that was just recently.” And then I thought, “No, I gave birth to my last child almost 14 years ago now.” So it's been in my head for a very long time. I've been consciously working on it as a story for about 10 years.

I should say too, if you are in this long journey of writing a novel, that this is my first published novel. I did write another novel that never made it to publication. It was a big, long sprawler of a thing that took me about 20 years, give or take.

How do you approach writing across all of these different forms?

It sounds really vague to say it's whatever mood I'm in, but it does partly have to do with mood. It has to do with time constraints. It has to do with what kind of container an idea or a concept seems to demand. Maybe it has to do sometimes with what I'm reading and what's inspiring me at the time.

When you commit to a novel, it's a big deal, right? You’ve got to be in it for a long time, and if it doesn't work out, it's a much bigger disappointment than if a poem doesn't work. It's not that poems can't be equally powerful and intense. But if it doesn't work, you can go on to another one. It doesn't have that same very involved time commitment.

You are a parent, a writer, a teacher. How do you handle all of that?

Not always very well. I wouldn't say I'm incredibly efficient. I used to actually get very frustrated and down on myself when I read interviews with people who said they were incredibly disciplined and got up at 5 a.m. to write before the kids were up or before they went to their job.

I used to think, “Oh, god, I'm not a real writer because I can't do that.” Or I didn't stick with a word count for every week, or whatever it might be. I've kind of accepted that that's my lot, and I'm okay with that.

I fit it in when I can. I fit it in around what's going on in my life. I do try to get away at various points for little mini retreats to gather what I've been doing and have a little space away from the demands of my life.

It's important to recognize that what is not strictly what you would call writing, as in, fingers to keyboard or pen to page, can still be writing and is still informing your practice. Try not to beat yourself up about it; you need time to recover from what's going on in your own life, and also to maybe spin what's going on into material that will work for your writing. Giving myself that grace has been really important to my writing process.

It's kind of gross, that productivity culture. That's capitalism, right? Applying that to art making. And art making doesn't work that way.

I even feel like sometimes, in order to cultivate the kind of receptivity that you need as an artist, you have to actually not produce all the time. You have to really take breaks and take care of yourself and take care of the people you care about, too.

Are there writing practices or rituals or strategies that you find yourself returning to?

I only ever write my first drafts on paper or in a notebook. I've always been that way, and then I edit when I input it into a document. Always pen and paper to begin.

Sometimes when I'm inputting something, I'll input it and I'll just start writing, and it starts happening. I get a bit of momentum. The original work has to be on the page.

I use timed freewrites. I've always used time freewrites. I do have a very strong censor-slash-perfectionist-slash-editor in my head, and I often find the only way I can do anything is if I say, “Okay, you're allowed to write crap. You’ve got to write for 10 minutes.” I usually have some kind of prompt that's been kicking around my head, or from something I already wrote. I couldn't actually create without that constraint. I need that.

A couple of other tricks. One is for poetry I have written in the past with a friend, the poet Rami Schandall. We've done a trick that we learned from the poet Stewart Roth and his river of words. I've done it in a couple of different ways.

You can do it in a circle, where you have a text that you pass around, and everyone reads a couple minutes out from the text. Usually it's good to do a text that's not very linear, that's kind of abstract, and anyone who's not reading aloud is writing.

As you're writing, there's a few things you can do. You can directly copy what you hear. It might be that the words you hear send you off somewhere, and you can go off on your own tangent. Or, you can do a combination of those things.

It's a way of drowning out the censor. You've got things in the background. I really like the image of the river, because whenever I think about it, I think about a grizzly bear next to a river when the salmon are running and there's just so much there. I can scoop something out at any time, and then I can take a break and sit back on my haunches and watch the river. I can munch on some salmon.

That exercise that works really well for turning off that sense-making machine too, if you're trying to do something that's a little more abstract or absurd or surrealistic.

The other thing that's been great is I have actually been collaborating with another fellow writer, writing short stories together, and it's been awesome. We write a little portion and then we send it to each other, and we go back and forth. It's great for when you're just sick of yourself. Writing is so inward, and you're so isolated a lot of the time.

We're in more of a groove now. I used to kind of be like, “Oh, I can't believe you wrote that. You took it in a totally different direction, and that's not where I wanted it to go.” Now, I feel like we're vibing more, and when it goes in another direction, I'm a little bit more like, “Okay, let's just go with it. See where this goes.”

Can you talk a little bit about what impact public space has on you as a writer?

I think for a very long time, I was trying really hard to make a space in my home that would be my writer's space. I was all Virginia Woolf and a room of one's own. I need a space with a door to close.

And then having little kids—we have a very comfortable home, I still have a corner of our bedroom that's kind of my office, but it's a place where things pile up, right? I find getting out of my family's domestic sphere and being somewhere separate is so important.

There is something about the library that is amazing in that it is this miraculous space that exists. Sometimes I need headphones because even though it's quiet, I need to drown things out or create my own space. But I like the fact that it is a public space. It's not like this private space where I'm always worrying about laundry or whatever it might be.

That space has been invaluable to me and my practice. I don't always go to the library; sometimes I go to a cafe or something like that, but the library has been really wonderful. I think it's infused by the spirit of the thing, what libraries are there for and who can access them. It feels very freeing.

What connections do you see at the intersection of mental health and wellness and art-making? What have your experiences been with that?

I don't know where to start. I feel like there's so much. I am a person who has struggled at times quite mightily with my mental health, and sometimes I think it's hard to figure out where the empathetic to a fault human begins and ends with the artist. That kind of cycle.

There is a gift that comes with some of these struggles, and partly it's the gift of a sort of different access to the world that comes with sensitivity. There's also the gift that comes with being very keenly aware of your own vulnerability, and I think that probably makes you much more aware of other people's and creatures’ vulnerabilities, whether those vulnerabilities are mental or physical or emotional, whatever it might be. I think that kind of access to others is really important as a writer. That's really been great for me.

I don't want to romanticize too much how hard it is to struggle with these mental health issues, because it's not fun sometimes. But I would say that figuring out, “Oh, this world is really not set up for so many people,” that's an insight that you have when you struggle in that way. I think that's one that most artists have too. That's the outsider’s vantage point.

I do think there's always a sort of gender issue at play there, because if you think about some of those lone geniuses that have been romanticized, who were quote-unquote allowed to be irresponsible alcoholics who left their families in order to cultivate that genius, it's a thorny issue.

What's it been like to have your debut novel published?

So far, really wonderful. The editing experience was great. I felt like Alana Wilcox and Crystal Sikma at Coach House really asked me all the right questions that allowed me to be brave about what I wanted the novel to be. That was wonderful. In a lot of ways, they were quite hands off. It was really just nudges in certain directions, but they really helped me to be brave about it.

I think the part of the thing about publishing short stories and poems is that, unfortunately, people are not always as excited or ready to welcome them as readers, because maybe they don't have the same broad popularity. Writing a novel has been different in that sense. It's a different beast.

My last poetry book came out in 2019, right on the verge of the pandemic. The last short story collection was in 2012, so that was 13 years ago. I feel like things have changed so much in terms of how books reach readers.

A lot more of it is happening through interviews like yours or podcasts, and a lot fewer sort of print outlets where things are getting reviewed and people are reading about them. So that's different for me, too.

Ask me again in a couple months. I feel like it's all still happening, and I'm still absorbing and integrating it. I organized and had a great launch and that was really special for me, because it was so long in the making. I really felt strongly about wanting to market and make a big celebration, and that was different. But I think that's partly like, yes, the first novel, and also the point in my life and what I needed to do to feel like, “Oh, this is here, and this has arrived.”

What's next for you creatively?

It's funny because I'm enjoying the novel coming out. But I think also, and I know a lot of writers feel this way, it makes you kind of yearn to be back in your hole. Like, “This is great, and I want you to read it and talk to me about it and leave me alone.”

I do have an idea for a novel, but it's really new, and I don't think I can talk about it yet. I'm definitely going to keep collaborating on those stories I was talking about with my friend Catherine, that has been great, so energizing creatively. It's a way to stay close to her, because we used to live in the same city, and we don't anymore, so that's been amazing.

I'm definitely dipping in and out of a new poetry collection. I think it's nice after you come out of a big project, to be able to play a little bit more. I think that's where I'm at.

If you had to offer a piece of advice to another writer, what would it be?

I would circle back a little bit to what we were talking about in terms of your process, and maybe not worrying too much about what other people are doing and how they're doing it. It often helps to see how different people do what they do, but not to take anything as gospel or the exact right way to do things.

Everyone has to find their way. And once you've found your way, believing in it and—it sounds so fundamental and almost cliche, but really, really staying true to yourself, and not just the story you want to tell, but how you want to tell it.

Even for people who feel strongly that they are an individual artist, there's a lot of messages out there in terms of what readers want, what the market wants. Don't listen to those. You know best what the story needs to be.

Find readers, whether they're editors or readerly friends, who understand that vision, who line up with who you are as a person, as a storyteller.

What’s the best book you’ve read recently?

The best book I’ve read recently that blew me away and shifted my mindset came out in the same batch of books as mine, another Coach House book, but it's nonfiction. It's a long sort of memoir-slash-essay. It's called Encampment, by Maggie Helwig (affiliate link*).

She is a poet turned Anglican minister who is the minister at St. Stephen's in the Fields in Kensington Market in Toronto. The book is about homelessness in Toronto, but also very much about this idea of space, owning things, what it means to have people living in encampments.

What was amazing about it was that it's a mix. It opens with an amazing rundown of the numbers, about how hard it is to survive in the city—anywhere, really, these days, but especially if you have any kind of disability or vulnerability. It's also a very human story about relating to people and extending grace to people. I just loved it.

Meet the Author interviews are lightly edited for clarity.

I hope you found inspiration from Heather's interview to build the writing practice you need, especially in this winter season. Don't forget to grab your copy of Born (affiliate link*)!

Soon, I'll send out a roundup of this year's Meet the Author interviews to recap all of the amazing conversations from 2025. Watch this space!

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