Her Body Among Animals by Paola Ferrante

In this genre-bending debut collection merging horror, fairy tales, pop culture, and sci-fi, women challenge the boundaries placed on their bodies while living in a world "among animals," where violence is intertwined with bizarre ecological disruptions.

A sentient sex robot goes against her programming; a grad student living with depression is weighed down by an ever-present albatross; an unhappy wife turns into a spider; a boy with a dark secret is haunted by dolls; a couple bound for a colony on Mars take a road trip through Texas; a girl fights to save her sister from growing a mermaid tail like their absent mother.

Magical yet human, haunted and haunting, these stories act as a surreal documentation of the mistakes in systems of the past that remain very much in the present. Ferrante investigates toxic masculinity and the devastation it enacts upon women and our planet, delving into the universal undercurrent of ecological anxiety in the face of such toxicity, and the personal experience of being a new mother concerned about the future her child will face.

Through these confrontations of the complexity of living in a woman's body,Her Body Among Animalsmoves us from hopelessness to a future of resilience and possibility. (From Book*hug Press)

• The CBC Books fall reading list: 40 Canadian books to read this season
• 13 emerging Canadian writers make 2020 longlist for $10K Journey Prize for short fiction
• 5 Canadian authors shortlisted for $10K Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best debut short story collection

Paola Ferrante is a poet and fiction writer from Toronto. Her books include the poetry collectionWhat to Wear When Surviving A Lion Attackand the poetry chapbookThe Dark Unwind.She was longlisted for the 2020 Journey Prize and wonRoom's 2018 prize for fiction.