Barry Dempster, twice nominated for the Governor General's Award, is the author of fourteen previous collections of poetry. His collection The Burning Alphabet won the Canadian Authors Association Chalmers Award for Poetry in 2005. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Ontario Premiers Award for Excellence in the Arts and in 2014 he was nominated for the Trillium Award for his novel, The Outside World. He lives in Holland Landing, Ontario.