Sydney Hegele

Sydney Hegele (formally Sydney Warner Brooman) is the author of The Pump (Invisible Publishing 2021). They are the winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award. Sydney’s poetry chapbook The Last Thing I Will See Before I Die is forthcoming from 845 Press in 2022, and their forthcoming novel Bird Suit was funded through the Canada Council for the Arts Research & Creation Program. Their essays have been published in Catapult and Electric Literature, and featured by Lithub, The Poetry Foundation, and Psychology Today. They live with their Fiancé and French Bulldog in Toronto, Canada.

Sydney currently serves as fiction editor of The Temz Review and a fiction and poetry reader for The Boston Review. They are a former Western University Student-Writer-in-Residence, a former Emerging Artist-in-Residence at the TAP Centre for Creativity in London, Ontario, and a former fiction editor of Patchwork Literary Magazine at the University of Iowa. Sydney received their Honors degree in English Language & Literature and Creative Writing at Western University, and they are an Alumnus of both the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Lighthouse Advanced Writer’s Workshop with Sheila Heti. 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.

Sydney's poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction work have been published in American Chordata, The Quarantine Review, and others. Their short story "The Bottom" was shortlisted for The Malahat Review 2020 Open Season Awards. Their work frequently explores intergenerational trauma, religion, queerness, mental health, and intimacy in all its forms, against the backdrop of Southern Ontario Gothic small-town living.