Jennifer Manuel has achieved acclaim for her short fiction and won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for her debut novel, The Heaviness of Things That Float (2016), which has been optioned for film. The Morning Bell Brings the Broken Hearted is her much-anticipated second literary novel. The author of two children's novels, Dressed to Play and Head to Head, as well as the Young Adult novel, Open Secrets, Manuel has been a Red Cedar finalist. A long-time activist in Indigenous issues, Manuel has taught elementary and high school in the lands of the Tahltan, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Cowichan peoples. She lives on Vancouver Island, BC, where she teaches high school English at Shawnigan Lake School.