Born

What happens when an English teacher goes into labour during a Toronto high school lockdown?

High school English teacher Elise loves teaching Shakespeare. She is also very pregnant. She’s trapped in a classroom with her Grade 12 students during a lockdown. Anthony, the cause of the lockdown, is roaming the halls with a knife in search of some solace, consumed by thoughts of his best friend Samantha, who is in peril. Maria, the school's counselor, is second-guessing her decision to turn him in.

As the lockdown drags on, Elise can no longer deny that she’s going into labour. And she’ll have to rely on the students to get her through: Shai-Anna and Faduma end up acting as midwives, and the others do what they can. 

In the same way the self shatters and sharpens when one is doing the hard work of giving birth, so does the narrative of the novel, with various people in the school picking up the threads of the story.

With infinite empathy for all involved, Born explores the myriad pitfalls and utopian possibilities of the school system, motherhood, and caregiving, and the sometimes fraught, sometimes transcendent nature of the student-teacher relationship.

Heather Birrell is the author of two short story collections: Mad Hope (Coach House Books, 2012) and I know you are but what am I? (Coach House Books, 2004). Her stories have been shortlisted for both the Western and National Magazine Awards and have appeared in numerous Canadian literary journals. A frequent book reviewer and winner of the Journey Prize, she also works as a high school teacher and a creative writing instructor.

ISBN: 9781552455005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: June 17, 2025

Praise for the author: Included in the Quill & Quire 2025 Spring Preview

“In her new collection, Mad Hope, Birrell puts her talents on display once more, exploring characters whose reasonable expectations of the world have been devastated by sudden death (sometimes violent) or other tragedies…Some of her characterizations are so arresting in their exactness they caused me to pause.” – The Globe and Mail “[Birrell] seems to have mastered the art of writing about universal themes and subjects – marriage, family, motherhood, death, sex – in a manner both familiar and unsettling. Her prose is dense with detail yet fluid, carrying the reader into the inner workings of her characters’ carefully constructed lives.” – Quill & Quire