How Should a Person Be? (Heti)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 25, 1976
• Where—Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Education—University of Toronto; National
   Theatre School of Canada.
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Ontario


Heti was born in Toronto, Ontario. Her parents are Hungarian Jewish immigrants. She studied art history and philosophy at the University of Toronto and playwriting at the National Theatre School of Canada. She works as Interviews Editor at The Believer where she also conducts interviews regularly, and she wrote a column on acting for Maisonneuve. Her brother is the comedian David Heti.

Writings
Heti's novel, Ticknor, was released in 2005. The novel's main characters are based on real people: William Hickling Prescott and George Ticknor, although the facts of their lives are altered. Her short story collection, The Middle Stories, was published in 2001 Canada when she was twenty-four, and by McSweeney's in the United States, and translated into German, French, Spanish and Dutch. In 2011, she published The Chairs are Where The People Go which she wrote with her friend, Misha Glouberman. The New Yorker called it "a triumph of conversational philosophy" and named it one of the Best Books of 2011.

Heti's book How Should a Person Be? was published in 2010, (2012 in the U.S.)—in which she describes as book of constructed reality, based on recorded interviews with her friends, particularly the painter Margaux Williamson. It was chosen by the New York Times as one of the 100 Best Books of 2012 and by James Wood of The New Yorker as one of the best books of the year. It was also included on year-end lists on Salon, New Republic, New York Observer, and more. In her 2007 interview with Dave Hickey for Believer, she noted, "Increasingly I’m less interested in writing about fictional people, because it seems so tiresome to make up a fake person and put them through the paces of a fake story. I just—I can’t do it."
Other activities

Extras
• Heti is the creator of Trampoline Hall, a popular monthly lecture series based in Toronto and New York, at which people speak on subjects outside their areas of expertise. The New Yorker praised the series for "celebrating eccentricity and do-it-yourself inventiveness". It has sold out every show since its inception in December 2001.

• For the early part of 2008, Heti kept a blog called The Metaphysical Poll, where she posted the sleeping dreams people were having about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary season, which readers sent in.

• Heti was an actress as a child, and as a teenager appeared in shows directed by Hillar Liitoja, the founder and Artistic Director of the experiemental DNA Theatre.

• Heti appears in Margaux Williamson's 2010 film, Teenager Hamlet.

• Heti plays Lenore Doolan in Leanne Shapton's book, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. (From Wikipedia.)