Sue MacLeod has lived in Halifax, where she was the city's inaugural poet laureate, in Toronto, and now in Montreal, but her roots are firmly in Cape Breton. Sue's poems have appeared in many journals, including The Malahat Review, Grain, Event and Room of One's Own, and anthologies including Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada, The Art of Poetic Inquiry and Desperately Seeking Susans. Her work has won honours including Arc's Poem of the Year Award; she has been invited to read in nine provinces, and has taught poetry at Dalhousie University and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Sue is also a fiction writer whose first YA novel, Namesake, appeared in 2013 to critical acclaim. In 2015, she was shortlisted for a national award for her work as a freelance editor. Mood Swing, with Pear is her third book of poems.