Mikaela Hart’s debut novel, IMAGINE US IN PARADISE, which follows a teenage girl during the months after a violent crime exposes painful rifts in her small, tightly knit Dutch Reformed community in rural Ontario; a story of love, friendship, and pull of freedom against the ties of belonging, for readers of Miriam Toews and Heather O’Neill, to Lara Hinchberger and Zainab Mirza at Penguin Canada, for publication Spring 2028, by Eva Oakes at Transatlantic Agency (World English).
Mikaela Hart is a doctoral student at McMaster University, where she is studying the role of art and literature in social change. Her academic work has been published in journals such as Nineteenth-Century French Studies in 2025 and Footnotes: The Undergraduate Journal of Sexuality and Social Change in 2024. Her short fiction has been published by Arrival in 2024 and by the Story Radio Podcast in 2022 and 2023. Throughout her writing she seeks to explore stories that have fallen through the cracks, especially those dealing with adolescence, girlhood, and modern religious microcultures.
Mikaela Hart is represented by Eva Oakes.
Congratulations, Mikaela!