Shauntay Grant is a writer and performance artist based in Halifax. Up Home won the 2009 Atlantic Book Award for Best Published Book, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Awards. Shauntay served as Halifax's third Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2011. Her other honours include a Poet of Honour Prize from Spoken Word Canada, and a Joseph S. Stauffer Prize in Writing and Publishing. She teaches creative writing at Dalhousie University.