Carleigh Baker is an nêhiyaw âpihtawikosisân/Icelandic writer who lives as a guest on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwu7mesh, and səl̓ilwəta peoples.
Her debut short story collection, Bad Endings (Anvil, 2017) explores challenging family dynamics, mental health and relationships.
The collection won the City of Vancouver Book Award, and was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Award, the Emerging Indigenous Voices Award for fiction, and the BC Book Prize Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award.
Her work has appeared in Best Canadian Essays, The Short Story Advent Calendar, and The Journey Prize Anthology. She also writes reviews for the Globe and Mail and the Literary Review of Canada.
“Stumbling through the fogs of loneliness, Carleigh Baker’s finely drawn characters find respite in the particular intimacy afforded by ephemeral relationships. A renewal of connection with the more-than-human world offers the characters sustenance amidst the demands of an ever-accelerating city.”
— CITY OF VANCOUVER BOOK AWARD (JURY CITATION)
“Her characters possess an abundance of hard-luck stories, true, but she writes them as sometimes wrong and sometimes foolish and hence eminently human in their fallibility.”
— The Georgia Straight
“Bad Endings is a deft and humorous portrayal of twenty-first-century humans’ lack of connection with nature, our authentic selves, and each other.”
— The Malahat Review
CBC: Why Carleigh Baker was lost until she wrote a short story collection.
Globe and Mail: 20 questions with Vancouver writer Carleigh Baker.
