Joan Baxter (b. 1955) grew up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and now makes her home in Bamako, Mali, West Africa, where she is a correspondent for the BBC. In 2001, she received the Evelyn Richardson Award for her non-fiction book about Africa, A Serious Pair of Shoes (Pottersfield, 2000). "Act of God" is from her collection Strangers Are Like Children (Pottersfield, 1998).