Ursula Pflug: Author

Ursula Pflug photo and cyborg glasses by Doug Back, Typewriter photo by Brion Wagner. Collage by Steev Morgan“Ursula Pflug’s writing is the kind you want to carry around with you for those days when it feels like you’re living in a strange and incomprehensible world; her work will make you feel less alone. Her words desire nothing more than to play fetch with your weirdest dreams. She creates wild inventions built of sentences that dig into your psyche and send back reports about all you never knew of the world. They are sly and joyous, scary and entrancing, profound, unsettling, amusing, and utterly – perfectly! – unique.” – Mathew Cheney


playgroundMotion Sickness - a Flash Novel by Ursula PflugHarvesting the Moon - short stories by Ursula Pflug
They Have to Take You In - Short Stories Edited by Ursula PflugThe Alphabet Stones a novel by Ursula PflugAfter the Fires a collection of short fiction by Ursula PflugGreen Music a novel by Ursula Pflug

April 2025 Events in Toronto

I’m in two climate fiction anthologies this spring, from groundbreaking Canadian small presses Exile and Guernica.

We had a lot of fun at the Exile/Stelliform launch at Free Times Cafe in Toronto on Earth Day.

Several of us read from our short fiction in Through The Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia, edited by Nina Munteanu and Lynn Hutchinson Lee. Lynn Hutchinson Lee also read from her debut, the eco-horror novella Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens (Stelliform). Lynn is also a coaching client of mine (though we didn’t work together on Origins) and I am very happy to see her doing so well, with two books out in a season!

Publishers and readers at Free Times Cafe on Earth Day

Michael Callaghan, Lynn Hutchinson Lee, Selena Middleton and Nina Munteanu

Reading from my short story Eclipse Season, at Free Times Cafe on Earth Day

At Free Times Cafe on Earth Day

Lynn Sargent reads from her short story in Through The Portal at Free Times Cafe

Lynne Sargent reads from her story in Through The Portal

On Wednesday, April 30, I was back in Toronto for a return visit to Bernadette Gabay Dyer’s wonderful series at TPL High Park. Readers included Elizabeth Greene, Daniel Maluka, Lindsay Zier Vogel and me.

Lindsay Zier-Vogel reads from the Fun Times Brigade

Lindsay Zier-Vogel

Daniel Maluka

Elizabeth Greene reads from No Ordinary Days

Elizabeth Greene

It was the last day of Poetry Month, so I took home poetry books by Daniel Maluka and Elizabeth Greene. Highly recommend both!

Poetry Books by Daniel Maluka and Elizabeth Greene

Poetry Books by Daniel Maluka and Elizabeth Greene

Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia

Here is a lovely new Exile antho edited by the brilliant Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu. There are so many terrific authors in this book, and I’m looking forward to reading them. I’m also proud to be included with “Eclipse Season.”

“Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia” has gone to print and will be released through bookstores on December 31st of this year. Folks can purchase books at 15% off if they pre-order before the date of release and we’re told that efforts to ship pre-Christmas will be made.

“Food of My People” and Playground of Lost Toys,” anthologies I co-edited with Candas Jane Dorsey and Colleen Anderson respectively are also available at the link below.

Pre-order from Exile

Looking forward to events in Toronto and Ptbo next year!

“Hopeful dystopias are so much more than an apparent oxymoron: they are in some fundamental way the spearhead of the future – and ironically often a celebration of human spirit by shining a light through the darkness of disaster. In Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia, award-winning authors of speculative fiction Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu present a collection that explores strange new terrains and startling social constructs, quiet morphing landscapes, dark and terrifying warnings, lush newly-told folk and fairy tales.”

Reading at TPL High Park October 23, 2024

I wasn’t part of a WOTS Toronto panel this year and was sad to miss it. As a consolation prize, I’ll be reading new short fiction at TPL High Park on October 23rd, 6:30 – 8:00 pm. Also on the roster are Gloria Blizzard, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Gary Geddes, Bill Jermyn, and Judith Penfold.

TPL High Park Branch, 228 Roncesvalles Ave, 416-393-7671

The story I’m going to read is called Found Divination. It was commissioned by author and translator Ian Thomas Shaw for an environmental fiction anthology he edited with Tim Niedermann called Green to Grey. It will come out next spring from Guernica. The story will also be part of my fourth collection, one of my current WIPs.

This is a free event. It would be lovely to see some of you. We will have books available for signing, but not Green to Grey yet. Very happy with the cover, and the company!

Many thanks to author and organizer, Bernadette Gabay Dyer, and to Toronto Public Library for providing us with space.

Photo Credit: Andy Carrol

WOTS 2023

Mentoring the Worldbuilding with Care and Intention panel at WOTS Toronto 2023 was a blast! Fellow Ptbo author Kate Story was celebrating the release of her first story collection, Ferry Back the Gifts. Superstar Cherie Dimaline chatted about Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, her new supernatural teen romance. Loved both these books! A pleasure to share the stage with two brilliant charming women.

Toronto WOTS Events May 27 and 28

Very excited to be moderating @torontoWOTS again this year. Come see us Sunday at 4 pm, on the Across the Universe stage. I’ll be chatting about Worldbuilding with Care and Intention with Cherie Dimaline, Kate Story, and Michel Jean. Can’t wait!

On Saturday I’ll be signing books at the Inanna table. Inanna, led by the much-missed Luciana Ricciutelli published my illustrated flash novel Motion Sickness (with SK Dyment), the near future novella Mountain, and the reprint story collection Seeds. Covers by the amazing Val Fulford. Copies of Seeds will also be available at Bakka-Phoenix, and copies of two of my edited anthologies, Food of My People, and Playground of Lost Toys, will be at the Exile table.

I’ll be signing from 1:30 till 2:30. I love tabling, it’s a chance to catch up with readers, fellow authors, and friends. Sometimes all 3 at once! Hope to see you.