Canadian Art, in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario, presents an evening of conversation with Maggie Nelson and Sheila Heti.

Maggie Nelson has expanded the definition of what it means to be a critic, combining poetry and theory with an autofictional mode of writing. Her celebrated book The Argonauts is a brilliant and unusual contribution to how we might understand art criticism as applicable to many things other than art, where the self and life become art objects to be analyzed and interpreted. She will appear onstage with Sheila Heti, whose genre-defying book How Should a Person Be? blends autobiography and fiction as “part literary novel, part self-help manual.”

Based in Los Angeles, Maggie Nelson is a poet, critic and the author of five books of non-fiction. Her books include The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning(a New York Times Editor’s Choice) and The Argonauts(winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award), as well as four collections of poetry. In 2016 she was awarded a MacArthur Genius fellowship.

Toronto-based author Sheila Heti has published seven books of fiction and non-fiction, including the novel, How Should a Person Be? (a New York Times Notable Book). She is co-editor of the New York Times bestseller, Women in Clothes. She will be publishing a new novel, Motherhood, in Spring 2018. She is the former Interviews Editor for The Believer magazine, where she interviewed many writers and artists.