Anne Michaels was born in Toronto in 1958. She was educated at Toronto University where she continues to teach as an adjunct professor of creative writing. Her first volume of poems, The Weight of Oranges, was published to great acclaim in 1986 when it won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. Fugitive Pieces, her first novel, has been published in over thirty countries and has won many international awards, including both the Orange Prize and the Guardian Fiction Award when it was published in 1997. Anne Michaels has published two other books of poetry, the award-winning Miner's Pond and Skin Divers. Her latest novel is The Winter Vault.