Mary di Michele was born in Italy in 1949 and raised in Canada. Winner of numerous prizes including first prize for poetry in the C.B.C. literary competition and the Air Canada Award, she is the author of eight books of poetry, including Luminous Emergencies, short-listed for the Trillium Prize, and Debriefing the Rose, short-listed for A.M. Klein award. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Chinese. She has also written two novels, Under My Skin, (Quarry) a Harper’s Magazine Notable Book, 1994, and Tenor of Love, (Viking Canada, Simon & Schuster, U.S.A.) 2005, recently translated into Serbian and Italian. She is a professor in the English Department of Concordia University in Montreal where she teaches in the creative writing program.