Theresa Shea is the author of two novels. The Shade Tree, winner of the 2022 Alberta Fiction Award and the 2020 Guernica Prize (for best unpublished literary fiction), is an historical novel that deals with racial and sexual politics in the United States from 1910 through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It tells a dramatic story of racial discrimination in the US and the search for justice. Her debut novel, The Unfinished Child, was a finalist for the Alberta Fiction Award and the Alberta Readers’ Choice Award. A word of mouth bestseller, the book draws on her experience of coming to motherhood later in life and being surprised by genetic counselling and prenatal testing. It remains a book club favourite.

Shea was born in the US and moved to Canada in 1977. A graduate of McGill University, Queen’s University, and the University of Alberta, she lives and writes in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Her third novel, Dog Days of Planet Earth will be published by ECW Press in fall 2026.