In an ambitious, yet intimate novel set in Taos, New Mexico, and Hamilton, Ontario, Sally Cooper explores unexpected motherhood, creativity, race, love and faith. With My Back to the World tells the stories of three women: Rudie, who is editing a documentary in Hamilton in 2010; historical artist Agnes Martin, who decides in 1974 after seven years' exile in New Mexico to begin painting again; and Ellen, a black woman burying her husband in 1870 on an Ontario homestead. Each of these women is waiting for the arrival of an unexpected child and their interconnected stories explore how society's, and our own, ideas of what it means to be a woman, a mother and an artist change over time. Evocative and introspective, With My Back to the World tells the complicated stories of how different women find faith in themselves in extraordinary circumstances.

Sally Cooper is the author of two novels; Love Object and Tell Everything. Her third novel is forthcoming in 2018. She has been published in journals such as CNQ, Grain, White Wall Review, Event, and the Feathertale Review. She is a Senior Editor at Hamilton Review of Books and has an MA in Canadian & Commonwealth Literature from the University of Guelph and she taught English and writing at Humber College for 23 years, and also was a mentor for the Humber School for Writers correspondence program. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario. Smells Like Heaven is her first short fiction collection.

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