When she was a small child, Elizabeth Hirst's school principal had to give her an award to get her to stop making books and focus on literally anything else. Her focus has improved since, expanding to punk rock, animation and the textile arts, but she still produces a disturbing number of books, such as The Face in the Marsh and Distant Early Warning, and short stories which have appeared in A Quiet Afternoon I and II and Halldark Holidays. She has been described as cheeky, highly intractable, exceedingly stubborn and as Canadian as saying sorry.