Heidi von palleske hotmail

The eyes have it. Actor and author Heidi von Palleske found a strict discipline when writing her ambitious second novel. But if we lose one eye, we do worry about losing the other one. Von Palleske was still mulling over that interaction as the deadline for a Toronto Arts Council grant approached and she realized she had no new writing to accompany the application.

The resulting novel is a gothic-tinged comingof-age story that begins with a boy named Johnny soon to become Jack falling out of a tree and losing an eye. Gareth whiles away his time in high school doodling photo-realistic representations of human eyes in the margins of his notebooks; Jack, meanwhile, accompanies his mother, Hilda, to Germany to visit an ocularist who has turned forging glass eyes into an art form.

The fact that the ascetic practice of daily writing came as something of a surprise to the author could be in part because her work as a novelist represents a second career. Or third, if one counts her time as a publisher for Smart House, which brought out nine titles over the two years between and Though she did well in English throughout high school, the Torontoborn writer chose acting as a career path almost by chance.

While the two professions are not at odds with one another, von Palleske admits that she has had occasion to bargain with herself about her true calling.

(Ottawa) Asbestos victim, Heidi von Palleske,

For now, though von Palleske continues to act in films when the opportunity presents itself, she has no plans to give up writing. During COVID lockdown, she has been composing sonnets that she shares on social media, some of which have been recorded by actor friends of hers. And she is already well into work on the sequel to Two White Queens. And it was muggy-hot in the studio Literary Fiction Finalist.

It is in the literary adult fiction category All Posts.