Robert Markland Smith is a bilingual Canadian writer. He was raised in Ottawa and moved to Montreal, Quebec, where he studied at Loyola. He won the Rector's Scholarship in 1966 and took a BA in French Literature, later studying translation and creative writing. During the radicalised period of the 60s and 70s, which he experienced first-hand, he was institutionalised for schizophrenia. After treatment, he became a French/ English translator for government, banks and business. Since 1968 many of his poems, stories and articles have appearedinternationally. He is married common-law with two daughters. His work is political, humane, and balances humour and pathos, to explore sex, religion, mental health, society and more broadly, the existential ironies of modern life.

This is his first book to appear in the UK.