The City Still Breathing

By Matthew Heiti

A body is found on the side of a highway. Naked, throat slashed, no identification. It disappears from the back of a police van and begins a strange odyssey, making its way, over the course of one early winter night, all around the northern town of Sudbury and through the lives and dreams of eleven very different people.

These eleven people Â? from the police officers who retrieve the body to the teenager who carries it away to the young waitrress planning to strike out for Toronto and Sudbury's local drug dealer Â? are all damaged in some way, and eventually, through the body itself, are brought together in a strange moment of violence.

‘Heiti’s Sudbury is a dark place, his characters caught between the desire to stay and the urge to flee … The City Still Breathing brings to life the strange, proud beauty of has-beens and also-rans in one relentlessly hard-luck town.’

–National Post

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Release date: Oct 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781770563544

Matthew Heiti

Born in a meteor crater, Matthew Heiti is a writer, performer, and teacher working in North Ontario. He holds a BFA in Acting from Ryerson University and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick. He has published a novel, The City Still Breathing (Coach House Books) and a play, Black Dog: 4 vs the wrld (Playwrights Canada Press). He has served as playwright-in-residence with the Sudbury Theatre Centre and Pat the Dog Theatre Creation. In his spare time, he is usually working. He sometimes writes at harkback.org.

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