Peter Trower was born at St. Leonard's-on-Sea, England, in 1930. He immigrated to British Columbia at age ten, following the death of his test-pilot father in a plane crash. His mother married a West Coast pulp mill superintendent who drowned soon after. Trower quit school to work as a logger for twenty-two years. Since 1969, he has published more than a dozen books of poetry--from which poems were selected for Haunted Hills & Hanging Valleys: Selected Poems 1969-2004 --and contributed to several issues of Raincoast Chronicles and Vancouver Magazine . Poetry collections such as Moving Through Mystery (1969), Between the Sky and the Splinters (1974), The Alders and Others (1969) and Ragged Horizons (1978) express his admiration and resentment at the magisterial power of nature. He has written three novels about the West Coast logging life: Grogan's Cafe (1993), Dead Man's Ticket (1996) and The Judas Hills (2000).
In 2002, Trower was awarded the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award and had his name added to the BC Writers' Walk of Fame outside the Vancouver Public Library in recognition of his contribution to BC literature. He lives in North Vancouver, British Columbia with his faithful cat, Hangup. Don McKay has published 8 books of poetry. Since 1975 he has served as editor and publisher with Brick Books. He taught creative writing and English literature at the University of Western Ontario and the University of New Brunswick for 27 years before resigning to write and edit poetry full-time. From 1991 to 1996 he edited The Fiddlehead magazine, and he has also served as a faculty resource person at the Sage Hill Writing Experience and The Banff Centre for the Arts, where he currently holds the position of Associate Director, Poetry, Writing & Publishing. He now lives in British Columbia. He has won the Governor General's Award for Poetry twice, for Another Gravity and for Night Field .
His work has also received the National Magazine Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award, and has been shortlisted for the Griffin Prize.