SLEEPING FUNNY

Miranda Hill's masterful debut collection Sleeping Funny is for readers of Alice Munro to Wells Tower.

"A story of miracles, Miranda Hill's “Petitions to Saint Chronic” is itself a wonder of narrative art This is writing of the highest order, packed with insight, empathy and suspense. “Petitions to Saint Chronic” is a story of survival. It will live on in the memory of all who read it." - 2011 Writer's Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, winning citation Sleeping Funny travels back through time from a current-day, wealthy Ontario-esque suburb, where a group of women lose their self-confidence upon the arrival of a new beautiful bohemian neighbour in “The Variance” all the way back to 19th century Kingston in “Rise: A Requiem (with Parts for Voice and Wing)” the final story, in which a minister has his faith and reason tested by an impoverished medical student. In between, descending backwards into time, a sex-ed class offers an unexpected twist on parenting and abstinence in “Apple”; in “Petitions to Saint Chronic,” a man who survives a failed suicide attempt embodies the hope and expectation of three strangers; and a mild-mannered government employee is changed forever by a detour on his daily commute in “6:19”. Our next stop is the early seventies in Northern Ontario, where a father's passion for a country singer precipitates a family's near breakdown and provides the means for their reconciliation in “Because of Geraldine”; then back to the fifties for the dark fairytale of “Precious”; and then to WW2, as a pilot's widow tries to reclaim her husband and her place in the community by building a Victory Garden in “Digging for Thomas”. This is a collection united by its suspense, surprise and crisp prose. In which the real world, whether in the present or past, is recognizable and simultaneously a little askew, almost as if we had been sleeping funny while reading them. MIRANDA HILL'S writing has been published or is forthcoming in The New Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead and the upcoming Journey Prize Anthology 23. Hill received her BA in Drama from Queen's University and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Hill has worked in television and as a freelance writer and communications consultant. She is the founder and executive director of Project Bookmark Canada, an organization that installs plaques bearing text from stories and poems in the exact physical locations where the literary scenes take place. Hill lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with her husband Lawrence Hill. Sleeping Funny is Hill's first book of fiction.