With intellectual energy, Sarah Klassen takes the reader on an unforgettable journey by Klassen's unsettling, stimulating and wonderful experiences in Israel/ Palestine and Lithuania, as well as life at home. Combined with reflections on nature, the poems explore the ongoing challenge of how to live in this world with compassion, hope and faith. Nature and personal experience, beyond what media and books can convey, bring together both the spiritual and physical dimensions of living in this conflicted world. Remaining firmly grounded in reality, Klassen seeks enlightenment and higher understanding of humanity through moments of clarity.

Born in Manitoba’s Interlake, Sarah Klassen learned at an early age to appreciate both birdsong and nature’s silence. An accomplished poet and fiction writer, she has won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award (Journey to Yalta), the High Plains Award for Fiction (A Feast of Longing), the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry (A Curious Beatitude), and the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry. Her work has been nominated for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, and the Aqua Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. The Witternbergs is her first novel. Klassen lives in Winnipeg.

Sarah Klassen's profile page

• Winner, Word Award