Heidi Sopinka's debut novel, The Dictionary of Animal Languages, is published September 4 and is already attracting major coverage: The New York Times Style Magazine has featured it in an article on the resurgence of women surrealists.
Inspired by the life and work of Leonora Carrington, The Dictionary of Animal Languages centres on a woman driven by her desire to claim an artistic life for herself. Born into a wealthy family in northern England and sent to boarding school to be educated by nuns, Ivory Frame rebels. She escapes to interwar Paris, where she finds herself through art, and falls in with the most radical bohemians: the surrealists.
Sopinka will be touring the country this fall; see her at Fall for the Book Festival in Fairfax, VA and East City Bookshop in Washington, D.C on October 11, and Miami Book Festival in November.