Happy Book Birthday to How You Were Born by Kate Cayley

Today, we’re celebrating the publication of How You Were Born by Kate Cayley!

Happy Book Birthday to How You Were Born by Kate Cayley! Originally published in 2014 by Pedlar Press, How You Were Born won the Trillium Book Award and was a finalist for a Governor General’s Literary Award. The stories in this collection explore themes of queer domestic life, gentrification, marriage, surrogacy, and childhood.

This tenth-anniversary edition gathers all the original stories and three new pieces that exemplify Cayley’s beautiful prose style. It also includes a Foreword by Alayna Munce and a Preface by the author. 

Cayley is a prose stylist, and her stories are firmly rooted in small, personal moments, capturing something strange and peculiar about everyday life. Each tale in this delicately crafted collection showcases a broad spectrum of human emotions and lived experiences.

Cayley is the author of many acclaimed titles including Lent, which we published in 2023. We are thrilled to welcome this collection to our catalogue.

Please enjoy this introduction to How You Were Born, filmed by Kate Cayley:

Praise for How You Were Born

“How You Were Born is a stunning collection. These stories are unsettling in the best possible way: tender and pitiless, they take the reader by the hand, by the chin, sometimes even by the throat. Look, they say, this is what it is to be human. This is how strange, how unspeakably beautiful, it can be.”
—Alissa York, author of Far Cry

“How You Were Born is a riveting debut story collection that continually surprises with its effortless blend of the psychological, the domestic, and the surreal. Whether she’s exploring the lives of circus performers, over-imaginative children, or an elderly man convinced that his next-door neighbour is his doppelgänger, Kate Cayley teases out unexpected insights, connections, dark secrets, and moments of transcendence.”
—Trillium Book Award Jury Citation

“Ghosts, tear gas, doppelgängers, child spies, a dragon tattoo, weddings, mothers, and acrobats—Kate Cayley probes the circus that is the human heart and proves it to be wild and eccentric, big, and sometimes aching, often bursting with wisdom… Every story in How You Were Born is delicately crafted, full of drama, epiphany, and strong emotion. Cayley’s prose flashes with insight—transparent and true. Here is new life.”
—Lisa Moore

“Cayley shows us, in How You Were Born, that the impulse to collect and then work through anxiety imaginatively is important and powerful.”
—Cleaver Magazine

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That’s all for now, dear reader. Please join us again in wishing a very Happy Book Birthday to How You Were Born by Kate Cayley. Available now from our online shop or from your local independent bookstore. Happy reading!

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