Thea Lim

Thea Lim was born in Toronto and grew up in Singapore.  She holds an MFA from the University of Houston. Lim has been published by Second Story Press, The Utne Reader and Canadian Women’s Studies/Les cahiers de la femme, and she was the web editor of the Shameless Magazine blog. She currently lives in Toronto.

Fiction

An Ocean of Minutes

Toronto: Viking Canada, 2018.
PS8623 .I48 O34 2018

Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)

America is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic. When Frank catches the virus, his girlfriend Polly will do whatever it takes to save him, even if it means risking everything. She agrees to a radical plan. Time travel has been invented; if she signs up for a one-way trip into the future to work as a bonded labourer, the company will pay for the life-saving treatment Frank needs. Polly promises to meet Frank again in Galveston, Texas, where she will arrive in twelve years.
But when Polly is re-routed an extra five years into the future, Frank is nowhere to be found. Alone in a changed and divided America, with no status and no money, Polly must navigate a terrifying new world to find Frank, to discover if he is alive, and to see if their love has endured.
An Ocean of Minutes is a gorgeous, devastating novel about courage, yearning, the cost of holding onto the past–and the price of letting it go.

Awards and Honours

2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize (Shortlist)
2018 The Globe 100 (Globe and Mail, 1 Dec. 2018)

Fiction

The Same Woman

Halifax, N.S.: Invisible Publishing, 2007.
PS8623 .I48 S35 2007

Publisher’s Synopsis

The Same Woman explores women’s relationships and how they are affected by their  surrounding culture. Ruby returns to the scene of a recent heartbreak, only to find the woman her lover left her for around every corner. But as Ruby gets deeper into battle, she is faced with the unbearable revelation that she and this woman might be more alike than she can believe.