Nelson Gray is a playwright, poet, director, theatre scholar, and a professor in the English Department at Vancouver Island University. His writings for the stage have won numerous commissions and awards and have been produced in Canada, the U.S., England, and Germany. He was the co-founder, with Beth Carruthers, of the Songbird Project – one of the first eco-art projects in Canada to bring together the arts, sciences, and community activists – and his poetry and scholarly articles have appeared in several journals and anthologies. With the assistance of a Canada Council Award and a SHHRC Insight Development Grant, he is currently working on the libretto and pre-production for Here Oceans Roar, an eco-opera and film script based on his experiences as a salmon troller in the Pacific Northwest, which incorporates oceanographic research from Ocean Networks Canada.