Deborah Ellis works as a mental health residential counsellor in Toronto and is the winner of the Governor General's Award in Canada (equivalent to the Carnegie Medal) for her first novel Looking for X. She was raised in Paris, Ontario and from the time she was 17 she has been a politicalactivist, advocating non-violence. After high school she went to Toronto and worked in the Peace Movement. Later she got involved in the Women's Movement, focusing on women's rights and economic justice. She has spent a lot of time in Pakistan, in Afghan refugee camps, talking to women anddocumenting their lives under 20 years of war. She felt it was important to put names and faces to the people that we see on television.