• With My Back to the World

With My Back to the World

May 1, 2019 | ISBN 978-1-928088-80-6 | 376 Pages

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May 2019376 pages | ISBN 978-1-928088-80-6 **Finalist for the 2021 Hamilton Literary Award for Fiction****Finalist for the 2021 Kerry Schooley Book Award** In an ambitious, yet intimate novel set in Taos, New Mexico, and Hamilton, Ontario, Sally Cooper explores unexpected motherhood, creativity, race, love and faith. With My Back to the World tells the stories of three women: Rudie, who is editing a documentary in Hamilton in 2010; historical artist Agnes Martin, who decides in 1974 after seven years’ exile in New Mexico to begin painting again; and Ellen, a black woman burying her husband in 1870 on an Ontario… Read more
    • **Finalist for the 2021 Hamilton Literary Award for Fiction**
    • **Finalist for the 2021 Kerry Schooley Book Award**
  • 384 Sally Cooper, Jan. 19, 2020 2020 01 19, 10.25 PM (Bernadette Rule, Art Waves, 19/01/2020)
    Sally talks about her novel.

    E140 with SALLY COOPER (Jamie Tennant, GET LIT, 25/07/2019)
    Jamie Tennant interviews Sally about her book.

    Intuitive Surrender (Kathryn Walsh Kuitenbrouwer, Hamilton Review of Books, 28/05/2019)
    "It wasn't until I imposed restrictions and tasks for myself that I could start writing. In my own life, I had the structure of new motherhood. [...] Then there were structures I imposed on the narrative: Agnes's, Ellen's, and Rudie's stories each unfold during the course of one day, and their chapters have mirroring moments and objects. Working this way allowed me to strike that exquisite balance. With such constraints, life-imposed and self-imposed, I could surrender."

    Storylines - May 18 2019 (Christine Crowley, Storylines, 18/05/2019)
    "With My Back to the World, is a delicately layered, sustaining bit of soulfood—the perfect accompaniment to a spring tonic."

  • Sally Cooper is the author of two acclaimed novels and the linked story collection Smells Like Heaven, nominated for the 2018 ReLit Award.

    Her writing has appeared in CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries; Electric Literature; Event; The Feathertale Review; The Globe & Mail; Grain; The Millions and The New Quarterly. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest, the Short Works Prize and the Vancouver Women in Film and Television From Our Dark Side Contest. Sally was the 2021 Cotton Factory Writer-in-Residence. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario.