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A tourist town folk tale of stifled ambition, love, loss, and the bird women who live beneath the lake.
Every summer the peaches ripen in Port Peter, and the tourists arrive to gorge themselves on fruit and sun. They don't see the bird women, who cavort on the cliffs and live in a meadow beneath the lake. But when summer ends and the visitors go back home, every pregnant Port Peter girl knows what she needs to do: deliver her child to the Birds in a laundry basket on those same lakeside cliffs. But the Birds don't want Georgia Jackson.
Twenty years on, the peaches are ripening again, the tourists have returned, and Georgia is looking for trouble with any ill-tempered man she can find. When that man turns out to be Arlo Bloom-her mother's ex and the new priest in town-she finds herself drawn into a complicated matrix of friendship, grief, faith, sex, and love with Arlo, his wife, Felicity, and their son, Isaiah. Vivid, uncanny, and as likely cursed as touched by grace, Bird Suit is a brutal, generous story as sticky and lush as a Port Peter peach.
• Set in a fictional lakeside tourist town called Port Peter. Port Peter is spatially based on Port Dalhousie in Southern Ontario, close to where Hegele grew up. The peaches and peach-related events are taken from the town of Winona, Ontario (near Grimsby), while the event "The Happening" is a real event that takes place in Grimsby, Ontario each year.
• Two book deal: To be followed by Bad Kids (2025), edited by writer Alicia Elliott, an essay collection about dissociative identity disorder and pop culture. Their debut short story collection, The Pump, won Canada's ReLit Award and was a finalist for a Trillium Book Award.
• Hegele's writing has appeared in Xtra, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Portland Review, CV2, American Chordata, Room Magazine, Psychology Today, and more, with interviews with Tin House Talks and WritingWorkshops.com (the education partner of Electric Literature).
Every summer the peaches ripen in Port Peter, and the tourists arrive to gorge themselves on fruit and sun. They don't see the bird women, who cavort on the cliffs and live in a meadow beneath the lake. But when summer ends and the visitors go back home, every pregnant Port Peter girl knows what she needs to do: deliver her child to the Birds in a laundry basket on those same lakeside cliffs. But the Birds don't want Georgia Jackson.
Twenty years on, the peaches are ripening again, the tourists have returned, and Georgia is looking for trouble with any ill-tempered man she can find. When that man turns out to be Arlo Bloom-her mother's ex and the new priest in town-she finds herself drawn into a complicated matrix of friendship, grief, faith, sex, and love with Arlo, his wife, Felicity, and their son, Isaiah. Vivid, uncanny, and as likely cursed as touched by grace, Bird Suit is a brutal, generous story as sticky and lush as a Port Peter peach.
• Set in a fictional lakeside tourist town called Port Peter. Port Peter is spatially based on Port Dalhousie in Southern Ontario, close to where Hegele grew up. The peaches and peach-related events are taken from the town of Winona, Ontario (near Grimsby), while the event "The Happening" is a real event that takes place in Grimsby, Ontario each year.
• Two book deal: To be followed by Bad Kids (2025), edited by writer Alicia Elliott, an essay collection about dissociative identity disorder and pop culture. Their debut short story collection, The Pump, won Canada's ReLit Award and was a finalist for a Trillium Book Award.
• Hegele's writing has appeared in Xtra, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Portland Review, CV2, American Chordata, Room Magazine, Psychology Today, and more, with interviews with Tin House Talks and WritingWorkshops.com (the education partner of Electric Literature).