SHANI MOOTOO was born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad. Her poetry books include Oh Witness Dey!, Cane | Fire, and The Predicament of Or. She is the author of several novels, including Cereus Blooms at Night, now a Penguin Modern Classic and a Vintage Classics book, and Polar Vortex, both shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Mootoo's novels have been long and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Dublin Literary Award, among others. Her prose and poetry have been widely anthologized, , including in Trinidad Noir, Trinidad Noir: The Classics, and The Haunted Tropics, and her poetry has appeared in Wasafiri, Poetry Magazine, Audemas, and Room Magazine, among other magazines and journals. She has been awarded the Doctor of Letters honoris causa degree from Western University and is a recipient of Lambda Literary's James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize and the Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award. She lives in Southern Ontario, Canada.