Gillian Jerome is a mother, writer, teacher who lives on the unceded land of the x?m??k??y??m (Musqueam), S?wx_wú7mesh (Squamish) and Sel?íl?witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, land and water she is grateful for and responsible to. Her first book of poems, Red Nest (Nightwood Editions, 2009), was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and won the 2010 ReLit Award for Poetry. She co-edited an oral history project, Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which won the 2008 City of Vancouver Book Award. Recently her poems have appeared in Hunger Mountain, New Poetry and GEIST. Having taught literature at UBC for two decades, she is turning her attention toward teaching language arts to Vancouver teenagers.