Goran Simic was born in Bosnia in 1952 and has published eleven volumes of poetry, drama and short fiction; his work has been translated into nine languages and has been published and performed in several European countries. One of the most prominent writers of the former Yugoslavia, Simic was trapped in the siege of Sarajevo. In 1995 he and his family were able to settle in Canada as the result of a Freedom to Write Award from PEN. Immigrant Blues is Simic`s second full-length volume of poems in English, and the first to be published in Canada.