Heather O’Neill (born October 4, 1973) is a celebrated Canadian novelist, poet, short-story writer, and essayist whose whimsical, gritty, and magical-realist style has made her one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Canadian literature. Born and raised in Montreal, she earned a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University before vaulting into international stardom with her 2006 debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals. The heartbreaking coming-of-age story won the 2007 CBC Canada Reads competition and the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, while securing a prestigious shortlisting for the Orange Prize for Fiction. O’Neill followed this success with consecutive Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlistings for her novel The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and her fairytale-infused short-story collection Daydreams of Angels. Her subsequent bestselling works, including The Lonely Hearts Hotel, the #1 national bestseller When We Lost Our Heads, and her recent dark fable The Capital of Dreams, further cemented her reputation for exploring trauma, survival, and the human condition through a distinctly cinematic and surreal lens. Today, she continues to write from Montreal, where her latest whimsical novel, Valentine in Montreal, plays out as a serialized love letter to the city's underground metro system.
This profile is awaiting source review; collected books are already linked below.
