Zoe Whittall

Zoe Whittall is the author of five novels, including the recent bestseller The Fake, which was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. The New York Times called her fourth novel The Spectacular, “a highly readable testament to the strength of the maternal bond.” Her third novel The Best Kind of People was shortlisted for The Scotiabank-Giller Prize. Her second novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible won a Lambda Award, and was an American Library Association’s Stonewall Honor Book. Her debut novel Bottle Rocket Hearts won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie prize. She is also a Canadian Screen Award winning TV writer. She lives in Prince Edward County.

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Wild Failure
By Zoe Whittall
Published by HarperCollins Publishers (HarperCollins Canada)

In Wild Failure bestselling novelist Zoe Whittall’s debut collection of poetic fiction contends with the meaning of desire for both intimacy and danger in a world that devalues queer femininity.

In “Oh, El” a dominant woman can’t stop herself from toying with a tender heart. In “Half Pipe” a teen girl’s heterosexual ambivalence gets her in trouble at a skate park. The title story, “Wild Failure” is a doomed love story between an agoraphobic and a wilderness hiker trapped in a passionate relationship that might ruin them both, if a mountain lion doesn’t kill them first. Living collectively in a rental house, group of bisexual roommates find themselves the subject of a true crime podcast in “Murder at the Elm Street Collective House.” In “The Sex Castle Lunch Buffet” a femme reflects on her brief stint at a strip club in the 90s when she learns of the death of a regular client. “The Sell-Out” is a satirical look at the role of literary ambition at a time when making a living as an artist has never been more difficult.

Whittall’s characters navigate shame, attachment, and disconnection in this collection of outsider stories that were inspired by the new narrative movement and hybrid literary fiction of the 1980s and 90s. Through playful prose and dark humor, Whittall’s subjects challenge what we mean by a beautiful life in this latest addition to the genre of outlaw literature.