How do you organise a life? From worst days to best, from birth to death? Perhaps putting it in alphabetical order would be easiest. Over the course of ten years, Sheila Heti kept a record of memories and musings, questions and observations. Then she put each sentence into a spreadsheet and alphabetised it.

What emerged was an abstract portrait of ten years of life. From memories of nights out and reflections on relationships to quick quips and hastily-jotted notes, Alphabetical Diaries offers kaleidoscopic insight into the mind behind Pure Colour, Motherhood, and How Should a Person Be?.

Confessional, perplexing, and intimate, Alphabetical Diaries is a non-traditional take on the diary format that creates a collage-like catalogue of a decade’s worth of minor and major moments.

Sheila Heti is the author of eleven books, including How Should a Person Be?, which New York magazine deemed one of the New Classics of the twenty-first century. Her books have been translated into twenty-four languages.

This event will be chaired by Gillian Moore, literary critic and current Reviews Editor at The Stinging Fly. Her first book, Self-Help and Contemporary American Fiction, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.