Sydney Hegele is queer writer from small-town Southern Ontario. Their published work often explores rural queerness, intergenerational trauma, environmental justice, mental illness, religious life, and the complicated relationships between these things. 

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They live with their husband and French Bulldog on Treaty 13 Land (Toronto, Canada), the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, and now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. 

 

Books

 

​Sydney is the author of The Pump (Invisible Publishing 2021), a National Indie Bestseller, winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction, and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award. Their poetry chapbook The Last Thing I Will See Before I Die was published with 845 Press in 2022. 

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Their novel Bird Suit, a lakeside gothic & queer folktale, told through myths, conjecture, witness, and belief, which explores intergenerational trauma, faith, mental health, and intimacy in all its forms, is forthcoming from Invisible Publishing in Spring 2024.

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Their essay collection Bad Kids, about their experience of dissociative identity disorder through a pop culture lens, will be edited by award-winning memoirist Alicia Elliot and is forthcoming from Invisible Publishing in Fall 2025. 

 

Publications 

 

​Sydney’s essays have been published in Catapult, Electric Literature, EVENT, Xtra Magazine, and Earth & Altar, and featured by Lithub, The Poetry Foundation, Memoir Monday, and Psychology Today. 

 

Their poetry and fiction have been published in American Chordata, The Portland Review, CV2, Room Magazine, The Quarantine Review, and others. Their short story "The Bottom" was shortlisted for The Malahat Review 2020 Open Season Awards.

 

Teaching

 

Sydney is on faculty at both the Lighthouse Writer's Workshop in Denver, Co, and Writing Workshops.com, where they teach craft workshops for both the Adult and Youth programs. Most recently, Sydney has taught 8-Week courses on short story writing and craft as a healing practice for traumatic experiences. 

 

A member of the Writer’s Union of Canada, Sydney has taught fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and publishing workshops for both adults and youth through Western University, Leading Word, The Conference of Independent Teachers of English, Kings College, Community Craft Classes, Pride London, and many others. 
 

Editorial 

 

Sydney currently serves as fiction editor of The Temz Review and a fiction and poetry reader for The Boston Review. They are a former fiction editor of Patchwork Literary Magazine at the University of Iowa.
 

Residencies 

 

Sydney is currently an artist-in-residence at the Flick the Switch Artist Collective in Toronto, Canada. They are a former Western University Student-Writer-in-Residence (2017-2018), and a former Emerging Artist-in-Residence at the TAP Centre for Creativity in London, Ontario (2019-2020). 

 

Education

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Sydney received their Honors degree in English Language & Literature and Creative Writing at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada (2018), and they are an Alumnus of both the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Lighthouse Advanced Writer’s Workshop with Sheila Heti.