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 is a poet, teacher, and editor. He has published more than a dozen books in a career that spans five decades. He has twice won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry, and won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip in 2007. His previous essay collections include the GG-shortlisted Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness, Deactivated West 100, and The Shell of the Tortoise, winner of the 2011 BMO Winterset Award. McKay lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.