Born in Manchester England, she came to Canada and Kitimat, B.C. in 1957. Her first collection of fiction City of Orphans (Porcupine's Quill, 1995) was shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. She received a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1996 and a MacDowell Colony Residency in 1998. He has an B.A. in English from Simon Fraser University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University in 1983. She has been the founding instructor of the creative writing program at Yukon College in Whitehorse where she co-edited Writing North, an anthology of Yukon writing. She is also the publisher of Linnaea Press, a literary chapbook series, and an editor for Northbound Press. She has also lived in Madrid, Canary Islands, London, Vancouver and Victoria.

[BCBW 2005] "Fiction"