Alison Calder grew up in Saskatoon and lived in London, ON and Vancouver before settling in Winnipeg. Her poetry has won two Manitoba Book Awards and been a finalist for the Gerald Lampert and Pat Lowther Awards. Synaptic, her third collection, moves between neuroscience and fairy tales to look at the nature of looking itself. She teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba. She takes knitting very seriously.