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An O. Henry award winning author, her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, PRISM international, swamp pink, The Dark and elsewhere.
Her debut collection, The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories (ECW, 2023) was nominated for an Ottawa Book Award and was the runner up for the Danuta Gleed Literary award.
Her debut novel, Other Evolutions (ECW, 2025), was nominated for an Ottawa Book Award and won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction.
She can be found on instagram and blusky @rhirschgarcia
Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
On my mom’s side I’m a second generation Ottawan. So I’ve always been here. And I’m pretty sedentary so I’m not going anywhere either.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I’m one of those annoying writers who knew they were destined to write since childhood. Since before I was literate actually: I used to beg the kindergarten aides to write down the stories I told them (they very kindly obliged).
True to writerly form I tend to be a solitary creature but after my first book The Girl Who Cried Diamonds was nominated for an Ottawa Book Award writers in the community reached out to support me. It was very, very kind.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
I don’t know if they shifted my feelings about the actual business of writing but I did think that the positive example of Ottawa writers made me aware of what I owe to my community.
I’ve tried harder to show up in the way people have showed up for me. I’m still fairly solitary but I go to more book events, I read more books by Ottawa authors, I congratulate other writers when they are nominated or win awards, and I’ve been on more juries.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
I think that we’re so consumed by being the country’s capital that it doesn’t leave a ton of room for Ottawa to define itself in any other way. However being underestimated like that is quite delicious. I can be out here doing really weird work with absolutely zero pressure. It’s very freeing.
Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How have the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?
I am always writing about Ottawa. It’s my home after all. And I find that it’s very neutrality and the fact that it has a reputation for being boring lends it the perfect backdrop to some of the eeriness I embrace in my work. My characters in some ways live very cushy lives so when that comfort is threatened the change feels more violent.
Q: What are you working on now?
I don’t like to talk about work in progress but let’s say I’m working on
a novel. In between I’m working on short stories which I love and will never
stop writing. The last one I wrote is a rat story that is so bizarre I fear it
might be unpublishable. I made the mistake of telling people about it and now
it’s all people ask me about. Where is the rat story? Why haven’t you published
it yet? You got another rejection for the rat story? I thought you loved
rats (I don’t) etc. I regret mentioning the rat story at all.
