The propulsive read of the summer is here with Heather Birrell’s novel, BORN, a novel whose premise is the question: What happens when an English teacher goes into labour during a Toronto high school lockdown? And everything that happens next is probably different from what you might expect from a polyphonic novel that is a life-affirming testament to community, care, and the social miracle that is the public school, informed by the award-winning writer Birrell’s own experience as a teacher in Toronto. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. In our conversation, Birrell and I go back to the start, to where we connected years ago as new mothers, soon becoming friends. And all these years later, it feels full-circle to be talking about a novel about labour and birth. And Birrell explains how BORN is about labour in other ways too, that it’s an ode to caretakers, to the undervalued work in our society that’s usual performed by women, and she tells me about the creative connections between BORN and George Saunders’ LINCOLN IN THE BARDO, another novel by someone best known for their short stories, and another that takes place in a liminal space outside the bounds of life. What happens when an English teacher goes into labour during a Toronto high school lockdown? High school English teacher Elise loves teaching Shakespeare. She is also very pregnant. She’s trapped in a classroom with her Grade 12 students during a lockdown. Anthony, the cause of the lockdown, is roaming the halls with a knife in search of some solace, consumed by thoughts of his best friend Samantha, who is in peril. Maria, the school's counselor, is second-guessing her decision to turn him in. As the lockdown drags on, Elise can no longer deny that she’s going into labour. And she’ll have to rely on the students to get her through: Shai-Anna and Faduma end up acting as midwives, and the others do what they can. In the same way the self shatters and sharpens when one is doing the hard work of giving birth, so does the narrative of the novel, with various people in the school picking up the threads of the story. With infinite empathy for all involved, Born explores the myriad pitfalls and utopian possibilities of the school system, motherhood, and caregiving, and the sometimes fraught, sometimes transcendent nature of the student-teacher relationship. Heather Birrell is the author of the novel Born, a poetry collection, Float and Scurry and two story collections, Mad Hope and I know you are but what am I?. As well as the mechanisms and mysteries of individual consciousness, Heather’s writing is concerned with how we give care and exist in community. Her work has been honoured with the Gerald Lampert Award for poetry, the Journey Prize for short fiction and the Edna Staebler Award for non-fiction. She has been shortlisted for both National and Western Magazine Awards and Arc Magazine’s Poem of the Year Award. Her poem “Wind” was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2022. Her stories, essays, and poems have appeared in many North American journals and anthologies, including The New Quarterly, Toronto Noir, Descant, pinhole poetry, and The Malahat Review. Heather works as a high school teacher and creative writing instructor. She has spent extended periods in the Kingdom of Fife and the Isle of Lewis in Scotland but now lives in her hometown of Toronto with her mother, her husband, and their two daughters. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe
