Sydney Hegele

Sydney Hegele (formerly known as Sydney Warner Brooman) is a Canadian writer.

Early life and education

Originally from Grimsby, Ontario, Hegele attended the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario and is currently based in Toronto. They identify as queer and use gender-neutral pronouns.

Writing career

Hegele's debut short story collection, The Pump, was published in 2021.

The Pump, a volume of interrelated short stories about outsiders living in a small town in Southern Ontario, was compared to the Southern Ontario Gothic style of writers such as Alice Munro. The book was the winner of the 2022 ReLit Award for short fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Trillium Book Awards for English fiction.

The book was also selected by CBC Books in 2022 as part of a Pride Month reading list of books by LGBTQ Canadian writers.

Hegele's debut novel Bird Suit was published by Invisible Publishing in May 2024. Their essay collection Bad Kids, edited by author Alicia Elliott, is forthcoming in 2026.

Selected works

Essays

• "The Great Iconoclast", EVENT Magazine, 2023
• "Reading Stephen King’s ‘It’ As a Child Confused My Sense of Justice", Catapult Magazine, November 2022
• "I Can’t Separate My Writing and My Diagnosis, So I Use Them to Help One Another", Electric Literature, August 2022
• "I Thought I’d Never Find Love After My Dissociative Identity Disorder Diagnosis", Catapult Magazine, July 2022

Short stories

• "Dirt Mouth", Room Magazine, July 2023
• "Mal Aux Dents (Or Toothache)", American Chordata, 2020

Poetry

• The Last Thing I Will See Before I Die, 845 Press, 2022

Awards

• ReLit Award for Short Fiction for The Pump (2022)
• Finalist for the Trillium Book Award for The Pump, English Fiction (2022)

References