Brenda Schmidt, is a writer, visual artist, naturalist and active blogger based in Creighton, a mining town on the Canadian Shield in northern Saskatchewan. Brenda grew up on a farm in the Coteau Hills of southwest Saskatchewan. She has a BA in English, from the University of Waterloo. Schmidt is the author of three previous books of poetry, A Haunting Sun (Thistledown Press, 2001), More Than Three Feet Of Ice (Thistledown Press, 2005) and Cantos from Wolverine Creek (Hagios Press, 2008). Her cross-genre book of essays and letter fragments, Flight Calls, is forthcoming from Kalamalka Press in 2012 as part of the Mackie Lecture and Reading Series. Brenda was finalist for the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry in 2001, winner of the Alfred G. Bailey Prize for Poetry in 2003 and a finalist for the CBC Literary Award for poetry on four occasions.