All The Waking Hours: Essays

by Erin Wunker

A lyric interrogation of life as a bored woman in the twenty-first century, for readers of Jenny Odell and Deborah Levy.

What does it mean to be a human in the late stages of capitalism? How does boredom change as we age, and what moves us from inertia to action? Does being a woman in middle age require magical thinking?

Shifting between autotheory, memoir, and shrewd literary and cultural analysis, acclaimed essayist Erin Wunker wades into the thick of these questions. Memories of unbelonging are given meaning alongside insights about the fashion statements of iconoclastic women artists, while the boredom of childhood summers is held in tension with the contradictory experiences of monotonous caregiving and intense love for one’s child. Using her own experiences as a springboard, Wunker gives voice to the friction between the anxieties and hopes that come with being alive in a hyper-mediated, ever-demanding world.

144 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2026

About the author

Erin Wunker is an assistant professor (limited term) in the Department of English at Mount Allison University. She is the co-founder of the feminist academic blog Hook and Eye, and a member of the Board of Canadian Women in the Literary Arts.

Reviews

[Jessi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Don’t ask me what was going on in my house those years. I couldn’t tell you. Too young, too involved in figuring out how to be a good child. Too solitary. Too nose in a book. Too head in the trees. Incidentally, the trees have changed since those years. Some have come down in hard winds.”

[Enid Wray · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Lovely collection - food for thought.

Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for granting me access to an early digital review copy.