Sydney
Hegele
Sydney Hegele is a fiction author and essayist from the Greenbelt. They are the author of Bird Suit (Invisible Publishing 2024), a queer Southern Ontario Gothic folktale about a tourist town, bird women, and the stories we tell ourselves about interfamilial violence, memory, and blame, which was longlisted for the 2025 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature. They are also the author of The Pump (Invisible Publishing 2021), winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award. Their essay collection Bad Kids: A Polyphony is forthcoming with Invisible in Fall 2026.
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).
Recent News
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​RBC Bronwen Wallace Award finalist Nicole Mae recommends Bird Suit for the Writer's Trust 2025 Summer Reading list
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Bird Suit has been longlisted for the 2025 Sunburst Award. ​
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Sydney is one of many contributors with a piece in Speech Dries Here on the Tongue: Poetry on Environmental Collapse and Mental Health, out now with Procupine's Quill. The collection is edited by Hollay Ghadery, Rasiqra Revulva, and Amanda Shankland, and includes work by Brandon Wint, Jennifer Wenn, Conal Smiley, Amanda Shankland, Concetta Principe, Dominik Parisien, Khashayar Mohammadi, Kathryn Mockler, Tara McGowan-Ross, D.A. Lockhart, Grace Lau, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Aaron Kreuter, gregor Y kennedy, Maryam Gowralli, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Sydney Hegele, Karen Houle, nina jane drystek, AJ Dolman, Conyer Clayton, and Gary Barwin.
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Sydney on Kathryn Mockler's interview series: I’ve been meaning to ask you. ​​
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