Bio
Jessica Westhead’s short stories have appeared in major literary magazines in Canada, the US, and the UK, including Hazlitt, Five Dials, Maisonneuve, Geist, The New Quarterly, and Indiana Review. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, selected for a Journey Prize anthology, and nominated for a National Magazine Award. Her chapbook Those Girls was published by Greenboathouse Books in 2006. Her novel Pulpy & Midge, published by Coach House Books in 2007, was nominated for a ReLit Award. Her critically acclaimed short story collection And Also Sharks, published by Cormorant Books in 2011, was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book, a nominee for the CBC Bookie Awards and a ReLit Award, one of Kobo’s Best Ebooks of 2011, and a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Short Fiction Prize. CBC Books has called her one of the “10 Canadian women writers you need to read now.” Her third book was the critically acclaimed short story collection Things Not to Do, published by Cormorant Books in 2017. Her novel Worry, published by HarperCollins Canada in 2019, was longlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads and was chosen by CBC Books for The Best Canadian Fiction of 2019. Jessica’s fifth book and third short story collection, Avalanche, was published by Invisible Publishing in fall 2023.
Jessica lives with her family in Toronto. This land is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaty signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.
Viewable Short Fiction
“Not Being Shy” in Five Dials
“Prize” in Hazlitt
“He Will Speak to Us” in Maisonneuve
“What I Would Say” in THIS Magazine
“Empathize or Die”, “Our Many-Splendoured Humanity”, “Steak and Eggs”, and “Dumpling Night” in Taddle Creek
Viewable Non-Fiction
Open Book Ontario Writer-in-Residence posts, 2018
Guest post about Octopus Books for The 49th Shelf