From a lyrical new voice in Canadian literature, a hybrid memoir that looks to the social dynamics of bees to illuminate the challenges and possibilities of queer motherhood.

For Kate Barss and her partner, Bear, the decision to bring a child into the world is anything but cavalier. There are no "accidents." Questions about who will carry and how to find a sperm donor buzz around them like bees in a hive.

As she embarks into this new and uncertain terrain, Barss brings her enduring fascination with bees—highly cooperative, labour-sharing, and female-led—into conversation with her experience navigating fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood as a gay woman.

Blending lush prose and researched nature reportage, A Hive Is a Heart That Crawls is a tender chronicle of a queer couple starting a family, pushing past the expectations and erasures of the dominant culture to discover the messy joys of parenthood that await them beyond.