Interview - Sydney Hegele and Bird Suit

Canada Reads American Style

Rebecca is excited to speak with Sydney Hegele, a queer Anglo-Catholic writer from the Greenbelt in Southern Ontario. They are the author of Bird Suit (Invisible Publishing, May 7, 2024) and The Pump (Invisible Publishing 2021), which was the winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award. Their essays have appeared in Catapult and Electric Literature, EVENT, and have been featured by Lithub, The Poetry Foundation, and Psychology Today. Their essay collection Bad Kids is forthcoming with Invisible in Fall 2025. Sydney’s work often explores small-town queerness, environmental justice, mental illness, religious life, and the complicated relationships between these things. They live with their husband and French Bulldog on Treaty 13 Land (Toronto, Canada).

https://www.sydneyhegele.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sydneyhegele/

Titles mentioned:

• Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker (Foreword)
• Play by Jess Taylor

• Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity by Gary Barwin