SHANE BOOK grew up in Canada and Ghana. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, an MA in English and American Literature from New York University, an MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His first volume of poetry, Ceiling of Sticks, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award and was a Poetry Society of America "New Poet" Selection. Excerpts from Ceiling of Sticks received The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize and a National Magazine Award. His second collection, Congotronic, won the Archibald Lampman Award, was a Kuhl House Poets Series Selection, and was a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Award, the Ottawa Book Award, and the Griffin Poetry Prize. He is Associate Professor of Writing at the University of Victoria.