Paola Ferrante is a woman writer living with depression. She was named a 2024 Rising Star by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. Her first short fiction collection, Her Body Among Animals, came out September 2023 with Book*hug Press and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, a runner-up for the 2023 Danuta Gleed Award, a Silver Foreword INDIES Winner, and nominated for The Shirley Jackson Award along with The 2023 Big Other Award for Fiction. It made Quill & Quire’s 2023 Fall Preview: Fiction and Short Fiction , CBC Books’ 74 works of Canadian fiction to read in fall 2023, The CBC Books fall reading list: 40 Canadian books to read this season, and The Globe and Mail’s Sixty-two books to read this fall. The Toronto Star’s Robert J. Wiersema called it “a profound, unique reading experience”. Her Body Among Animals received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which said “There is no filler here; each story is devastating, brilliantly imaginative, and almost impossible to summarize neatly. Ferrante is a vital new voice in short fiction.” Her Body Among Animals was published in the UK by Influx Press in August 2024.
Paola Ferrante’s debut poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving A Lion Attack, (Mansfield Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She was longlisted for the 2020 Journey Prize for “When Foxes Die Electric,” won Room‘s 2018 prize for Fiction, as selected by Zoe Whittall, and Grain’s Short Grain 2020 Prize for Poetry. She also won The New Quarterly’s 2019 Peter Hinchcliffe Fiction Award for “The Underside of a Wing.” Her work has appeared in The Journey Prize Stories 32 (McClelland & Stewart, 2020), Best Canadian Poetry, 2021 (Biblioasis, 2021), The Master’s Review Anthology Volume IX (2020), North American Review, PRISM International, and elsewhere. Her latest poetry chapbook is The Dark Unwind (knifeforkbook, 2022). She lives in Toronto, Canada with her spouse Mat, and their son.
Paola Ferrante gratefully acknowledges the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Access Copyright, the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, and Toronto Arts Council.
