Bill Gaston was born in Tacoma, Washington, and grew up in Canada, becoming a Canadian citizen as a teenager to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. He has lived and worked, mostly as an itinerant scholar, all across Canada, in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Toronto, Vancouver and, finally, Victoria. Gaston is the author of numerous books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, including The World, winner of the Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction; Gargoyles, winner of the Victoria Book Prize and finalist for a Governor General’s Award; Mount Appetite, finalist for the Giller Prize; and the memoir Just Let Me Look at You, finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize. He lives, grows food, and writes, with the writer Dede Crane, on Gabriola Island, in the Salish Sea.