Shortlisted for the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction
Winner of a 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award
Nominated for a 2023 Shirley Jackson Award
Shortlisted for the 2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award

In this genre-bending debut collection merging horror, fairy tales, pop culture, and sci-fi, women challenge the boundaries placed on their bodies while living in a world “among animals,” where violence is intertwined with bizarre ecological disruptions.

A sentient sex robot goes against her programming; a grad student living with depression is weighed down by an ever-present albatross; an unhappy wife turns into a spider; a boy with a dark secret is haunted by dolls; a couple bound for a colony on Mars take a road trip through Texas; a girl fights to save her sister from growing a mermaid tail like their absent mother.

Magical yet human, haunted and haunting, these stories act as a surreal documentation of the mistakes in systems of the past that remain very much in the present. Ferrante investigates toxic masculinity and the devastation it enacts upon women and our planet, delving into the universal undercurrent of ecological anxiety in the face of such toxicity, and the personal experience of being a new mother concerned about the future her child will face.

Through these confrontations of the complexity of living in a woman’s body, Her Body Among Animals moves us from hopelessness to a future of resilience and possibility.

Paola Ferrante is a writer living with depression. Her debut poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving a Lion Attack (2019), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize. She has won Grain Magazine's Short Grain Contest for Poetry, The New Quarterly's Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award, Room Magazine's Fiction Contest, and was longlisted for the 2020 Journey Prize for the story “When Foxes Die Electric.” Her work appears in After Realism: 24 Stories for the 21st Century (2022), Best Canadian Poetry 2021 (2021), North American Review, PRISM International, and elsewhere. She was born, and still resides in, Toronto.

Paola Ferrante's profile page

• Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction
• Winner, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
• Nominated, Shirley Jackson Awards
• Runner-up, Danuta Gleed Literary Award

“Paola Ferrante's monster-haunted stories are as dark as a moonless lake—and as beautiful.” —André Forget, Amazon Canada First Novel Award–author of In the City of Pigs

“Gorgeous, wry, and unsettling, Her Body Among Animals pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go until the final page... These stories are unlike anything I have ever read, and Ferrante is one of the most exciting and original new voices in Canadian literature.” —Amy Jones, author of Pebble & Dove

"These stories are electric. Ferrante approaches the short story as a full and beautiful form in itself; while her subject matter is quite dissimilar to the great Alice Munro, her stories are similar in that they contain whole worlds." —The Miramichi Reader

“The vibrant stories in Paola Ferrante’s collection Her Body Among Animals transport the reader to strange, yet achingly familiar territory. Ferrante holds up a funhouse mirror to our contemporary moment with her sharp and dazzling prose.” —Doretta Lau, author of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?

“These stories are a testament to a mind that travels far and a voice that speaks an urgent language.” —Angélique Lalonde, Scotiabank Giller prize–shortlisted author of Glorious Frazzled Beings

"Precise yet poetic, sharply observed yet compassionate and tender, these cautionary tales for future generations burst the bounds of genre and take us into new and exciting literary realms." —David Demchuk, Scotiabank Giller Prize–nominated author of The Bone Mother and RED X

"Ferrante's writing is smart, fast-paced and full of looping sensory images and details that guide her reader into the skin of each deeply fleshed-out and sympathetic character, and zips us into their minds."—Susan Sanford Blades

“A tour de force of storytelling, a powerful, challenging, rewarding experience.” —Toronto Star

“Elegant and arresting, the eleven modern fables in Paola Ferrante’s Her Body Among Animals thrum with a desperate, racing pulse as they capture the everyday horrors women live with and the sacrifices—of personhood, opportunity, and safety—their ordinary lives require.” —Foreword Reviews

"Ferrante's writing is smart, fast-paced and full of looping sensory images and details that guide her reader into the skin of each deeply fleshed-out and sympathetic character, and zips us into their minds."—Susan Sanford Blades

"Precise yet poetic, sharply observed yet compassionate and tender, these cautionary tales for future generations burst the bounds of genre and take us into new and exciting literary realms." —David Demchuk, Scotiabank Giller Prize–nominated author of The Bone Mother and RED X

“Paola Ferrante's monster-haunted stories are as dark as a moonless lake—and as beautiful.” —André Forget, Amazon Canada First Novel Award–author of In the City of Pigs

"Ferrante's writing is smart, fast-paced and full of looping sensory images and details that guide her reader into the skin of each deeply fleshed-out and sympathetic character, and zips us into their minds."—Susan Sanford Blades

“The vibrant stories in Paola Ferrante’s collection Her Body Among Animals transport the reader to strange, yet achingly familiar territory. Ferrante holds up a funhouse mirror to our contemporary moment with her sharp and dazzling prose.” —Doretta Lau, author of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?

“Elegant and arresting, the eleven modern fables in Paola Ferrante’s Her Body Among Animals thrum with a desperate, racing pulse as they capture the everyday horrors women live with and the sacrifices—of personhood, opportunity, and safety—their ordinary lives require.” —Foreword Reviews

“A tour de force of storytelling, a powerful, challenging, rewarding experience.” —Toronto Star

"Ferrante's writing is smart, fast-paced and full of looping sensory images and details that guide her reader into the skin of each deeply fleshed-out and sympathetic character, and zips us into their minds."—Susan Sanford Blades

"Precise yet poetic, sharply observed yet compassionate and tender, these cautionary tales for future generations burst the bounds of genre and take us into new and exciting literary realms." —David Demchuk, Scotiabank Giller Prize–nominated author of The Bone Mother and RED X

“There is no filler here; each story is devastating, brilliantly imaginative, and almost impossible to summarize neatly. Ferrante is a vital new voice in short fiction.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Elegant and arresting, the eleven modern fables in Paola Ferrante’s Her Body Among Animals thrum with a desperate, racing pulse as they capture the everyday horrors women live with and the sacrifices—of personhood, opportunity, and safety—their ordinary lives require.” —Foreword Reviews

Her Body Among Animals by Paola Ferrante is shortlisted for the 2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award.

“A tour de force of storytelling, a powerful, challenging, rewarding experience.” —Toronto Star

"These stories are electric. Ferrante approaches the short story as a full and beautiful form in itself; while her subject matter is quite dissimilar to the great Alice Munro, her stories are similar in that they contain whole worlds." —The Miramichi Reader

“Elegant and arresting, the eleven modern fables in Paola Ferrante’s Her Body Among Animals thrum with a desperate, racing pulse as they capture the everyday horrors women live with and the sacrifices—of personhood, opportunity, and safety—their ordinary lives require.” —Foreword Reviews

“Gorgeous, wry, and unsettling, Her Body Among Animals pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go until the final page... These stories are unlike anything I have ever read, and Ferrante is one of the most exciting and original new voices in Canadian literature.” —Amy Jones, author of Pebble & Dove

“These stories are a testament to a mind that travels far and a voice that speaks an urgent language.” —Angélique Lalonde, Scotiabank Giller prize–shortlisted author of Glorious Frazzled Beings

"These stories are electric. Ferrante approaches the short story as a full and beautiful form in itself; while her subject matter is quite dissimilar to the great Alice Munro, her stories are similar in that they contain whole worlds." —The Miramichi Reader

“The vibrant stories in Paola Ferrante’s collection Her Body Among Animals transport the reader to strange, yet achingly familiar territory. Ferrante holds up a funhouse mirror to our contemporary moment with her sharp and dazzling prose.” —Doretta Lau, author of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?

“These stories are a testament to a mind that travels far and a voice that speaks an urgent language.” —Angélique Lalonde, Scotiabank Giller prize–shortlisted author of Glorious Frazzled Beings

"With a firm grasp of our grim reality, Ferrante daringly explores what it means to be a woman and what it means to live in exposed ecosystems. Readers will take flight with the characters through infinite worlds where realities and unrealities intersect to allow for human metamorphoses, both in body and mind. Her Body Among Animals is a collection of stories that will haunt you even after you put the book down." —Room Magazine

"These stories are electric. Ferrante approaches the short story as a full and beautiful form in itself; while her subject matter is quite dissimilar to the great Alice Munro, her stories are similar in that they contain whole worlds." —The Miramichi Reader

“Gorgeous, wry, and unsettling, Her Body Among Animals pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go until the final page... These stories are unlike anything I have ever read, and Ferrante is one of the most exciting and original new voices in Canadian literature.” —Amy Jones, author of Pebble & Dove

“Paola Ferrante's monster-haunted stories are as dark as a moonless lake—and as beautiful.” —André Forget, Amazon Canada First Novel Award–author of In the City of Pigs