Hello! I'm Victoria.
And I'm happy you found me.
Professional Bio: I'm a creative, resourceful communications specialist with 8 years of experience in digital publishing and marketing for clients in a variety of sectors, including the Motley Fool, University of Toronto, Ryerson University, The Hospital for Sick Children, Altima Healthcare, The Mark, This Magazine, Broken Pencil Magazine and many others.
From crafting fresh, pithy web copy to collaborating on book-length works to executing stellar social media campaigns, I'm your girl! Building on my graduate work, I'm extremely passionate about innovative brand storytelling and knowledge translation. Despite my rather solemn expression in the photo above, I'm warm, enthusiastic, and quick to respond: communication is key in meeting our goals together.
Literary Bio: Widely acclaimed in the Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and Quill and Quire, my novel Mooncalves is available now! Based on true events, the book follows the implosion of a cult in rural Quebec. Take a peek at some reviews, browse reader reviews on Goodreads, pick up your copy, or find it at your local library.
I am a member of the Writers Union of Canada, a fiction editor at Broken Pencil Magazine, a two-time recipient of the Ontario Arts Council Writer's Works in Progress Grant (2013, 2016) and a recipient of the Ontario Arts Council Writers' Reserve (2015).
I have been publishing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry since 2010; you'll find a lot of it here.
My digital fiction project, I Have To Tell You, was written with the support of multiple grants from the Ontario Arts Council. It was published with 0s&1s in June 2014. It was reviewed and mentioned in The Guardian, Publisher's Weekly, The LA Review of Books, Ploughshares, and HTML Giant.
This excerpt touches on Andy Warhol, heartbreak and the music industry; this one features undying love and an untimely death in a swimming pool, in equal measure.
Here's me talking about the book.
Curious? Get your copy today!
Select praise for I Have To Tell You:
“The story unfolds like pleats on a fan being opened very slowly, the author revealing crucial moments from unexpected angles and points of view...The book is lovely, slow, and liquid, an accomplished debut."
— Diana Wagman in the Los Angeles Review of Books
"Graceful and poignant, often redolent of Annie Dillard’s sparing prose rising to beautiful abstractions, open to the everyday’s influence on personal narratives...If there ever is a Great American Novel (a probably stupid concept) this is how it should look—but of course it’s Canadian."
— Joe Hogle in HTML Giant
"Hetherington throws a glaring spotlight on the discomfort and insecurity of entering adulthood, of waking up one morning and realizing you’re already there….a book that kept me reading and that will hit a nerve with readers navigating the platonic and romantic complexities of adulthood."
— Brenna Dixon in Ploughshares Blog.
Academic Bio: I hold an Honors Bachelor’s degree in English and Women’s Studies from the University of Toronto (2013). My undergraduate thesis, titled “You Hear Funny Things,” was awarded a Writer’s Works in Progress Grant from the Ontario Arts Council (2013).
Supervised by Dr. Irene Gammel at Ryerson University, my Master’s thesis, “Memory, Personal Trauma, and Social Media: Writing the Cyber-Body" (2016) used Twitter fiction to explore digital sociality, and the interaction of human and binary memory in the context of digital media platforms. You can read about the project here.
