Gloria Engel was born in southwest Saskatchewan on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. She is married and has four sons, three grandsons, three granddaughters and one great-granddaughter. With her husband, she served for thirty-eight years with Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. They studied linguistics, then moved with their family to Guatemala, where their initial tasks were to develop an alphabet and analyze the grammar of the Pokomchi language, which was then unwritten. Later tasks were in translation, literacy, supporting roles and teaching in the United States, Mexico, Guatemala and Canada. Gloria writes articles, children’s stories and poetry, and has published in various magazines. Cathedral of Stars is her first book.