Sheila Heti is the author of the short story collection, The Middle Stories (McSweeney’s Books); the novel, Ticknor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and the novel-from life, How Should a Person Be? (Anansi). She recently published an illustrated book for children, We Need a Horse (McSweeney’s McMullins), with paintings by Clare Rojas, and a non-fiction book co-authored by Misha Glouberman called The Chairs Are Where the People Go (Faber and Faber). She works as Interviews Editor at The Believer, and since 2006 has contributed long interviews with writers and artists to the magazine.

Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, n+1, McSweeney’s, Brick, Geist, Maisonneuve, Bookforum, The Guardian, and other places, and her writing has been translated into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Vietnamese and Serbian.

In 2001, she created the Trampoline Hall lecture series, at which people deliver lectures on subjects outside their areas of expertise. The shows have been running monthly in Toronto since that time, have toured widely, and have sold out every show since their inception. The New Yorker praised the series for “celebrating eccentricity and do-it-yourself inventiveness.”

In 2008, she created The Metaphysical Poll, a blog that collected the sleeping dreams people were having about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the Democratic primaries. The blog received hundreds of dreams and press in The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Slate, The New Yorker, The Economist, The LA Times, The Huffington Post and elsewhere.

She appeared in photographs as Lenore Doolan in Leanne Shapton’s book-as-auction catalogue, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry, which is being turned into a movie with Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman in the title roles.

She appears in Margaux Williamson’s film Teenager Hamlet, and with her runs The Production Front, which puts on shows and promotes the work of other artists.

She studied playwriting at the National Theatre School in Montreal before attending the University of Toronto to study art history and philosophy.

You can read or contribute to her poll of artists, writers and others - a project called Aesthetic 999 - by clicking here.